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ACCESS-ESM

ACCESS ESM model

The ACCESS Earth System Model (ACCESS-ESM) is a fully-coupled global climate model that includes atmosphere, land, ocean, sea ice, ocean biogeochemistry and land biogeochemistry components, linked together by a coupler.
This means it can simulate both the physical climate and global biogeochemical cycles, in particular the carbon cycle.

ACCESS-ESM1.5

ACCESS-ESM1.5 1 is a fully-coupled climate model with land and ocean carbon cycle components. ACCESS-ESM1.5 was developed primarily to enable Australia to participate in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) with an Earth System Model (ESM) version.

ACCESS-NRI has released ACCESS-ESM1.5 configurations as an adaptation of those originally developed by CSIRO and CLEX CMS.

There are currently two supported configurations:

  • Pre-industrial concentration driven:
    A global coupled model configuration running in CO2 concentration driven mode under pre-industrial forcings, as described in Ziehn et al. (2020). Pre-industrial forcing data including atmospheric CO2 concentrations are primarily sourced from UKMO versions of CMIP6 inputs, with additional atmospheric forcings sourced from CMIP5 and land cover data adapted from Lawrence et al. (2012).
  • Historical concentration driven:
    A global coupled model configuration running in co2 concentration driven mode under time varying historical (1850-2014) forcings, as described in Ziehn et al. (2020). Historical forcing data including atmospheric CO2 concentrations are primarily sourced from UKMO versions of CMIP6 inputs, with land use change data adapted from the Land-Use Harmonisation 2 (LUH2) dataset developed for CMIP6 (Hurtt et al. 2017).

Model components

  • Atmosphere: UM7.3, GA7.1 science configuration.
    N96 spatial resolution (1.875° x 1.25°), 38 vertical levels.

  • Land: CABLE2.4.

  • Land Biogeochemistry: CASA-CNP.

  • Ocean: MOM5.
    Tripolar grid, 1° spatial resolution, 50 vertical levels.

  • Ocean Biogeochemistry: WOMBAT.

  • Sea ice: CICE4.1.
    Same grid as Ocean.

  • Coupler: OASIS3-MCT.

ACCESS-ESM1.5 has an equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3.87°C for doubled CO2 concentration.

Run ACCESS-ESM

  1. Tilo Ziehn, Matthew A Chamberlain, Rachel M Law, Andrew Lenton, Roger W Bodman, Martin Dix, Lauren Stevens, Ying-Ping Wang, and Jhan Srbinovsky. The Australian Earth System Model: ACCESS-ESM1.5. Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science, 70(1):193–214, 2020. doi:10.1071/ES19035. ↩

Last update: December 13, 2024