The Community Climate System Model (CCSM) is a coupled Global Climate Model developed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) with funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and NASA. The coupled components include an atmospheric model (Community Atmosphere Model), a land-surface model (Community Land Model), an ocean model (Parallel Ocean Program), and a sea ice model (Community Sea Ice Model). CCSM is maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
The software design of CCSM is based around the notion of a physical/dynamical component of the climate system, and as a freely available community model is designed to work on a variety of machine architectures powerful enough to run the model. The offline chemical transport model has been described as 'very efficient'.
The model itself is divided into four component models (land, sea-ice, ocean and atmosphere) connected by a coupler, which exchanges information with each of the component models. It has been suggested by NCAR themselves that because of this, CCSM cannot be considered a single climate model, but rather a framework for building and testing various climate models.
Read more about Community Climate System Model: Ocean Model (docn6), Atmosphere Model (CAM), Development
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