This INCITE project supports the Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) model, a multi-laboratory project developing a leading-edge climate and Earth system and driven by three grand challenges, two of which are the focus of this project using the ACME v1 model: (1) in the water cycle, how will more realistic portrayals of its important features (e.g., resolution, clouds, aerosols) affect river flow and associated freshwater supplies at the watershed scale?, and (2) in cryosphere systems, could a dynamic instability in the Antarctic Ice Sheet be triggered within the next 40 years?

For (1), the team’s objective is to simulate changes in the hydrological cycle with a specific focus on precipitation and surface water in orographically complex regions, such as the western United States and Amazon headwaters. For (2), ACME examines the near-term risk of initiating the dynamic instability and onset of the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s collapse due to rapid melting by adjacent warming waters —the first fully coupled simulation to include dynamic ice shelf-ocean interactions.