PPE Regression Optimization Center for ESM Evaluation and Development
Documentation

Director: Daniel McCoy, Ph.D.
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Wyoming
Dr. McCoy's Website

Lead Institutions:

• University of Wyoming
• University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Collaborators:

• DOE Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
• DOE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)

Earth System Models (ESMs) need to be able to predict environmental change decades into the future at a global scale, but many of the processes that set global climate operate at a scale of micrometers and seconds, like aerosols, clouds, and precipitation. To tackle this problem we have to develop parameterizations that allow our global scale models to represent these phenomena. Department of Energy is supporting us to work with researchers at Pacific Northwest National Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and with the UW School of Computing and Caulton Research Group to come up with a development framework for E3SM and challenge model variants with high-quality observations from DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites.

The goal of PROCEED is to become a key partner in Earth System Model (ESM) development in the United States through the creation of a unique observationally-driven model evaluation and development framework.
We base PROCEED around two pillars:

• Create a perturbed physics ensemble (PPE) approach to systematically evaluate and constrain ESMs;
• Create a large eddy simulation methodology to bridge process-scale in situ observations to resolution of global models.

Center Website: http://PROCEED-ESM.github.io
Meeting Schedule and Discussion Forum: PROCEED Forum

PROCEED is currently supported by the Department of Energy Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DOE EPSCoR) Implementation Grants program in the Program Office of Biological & Environmental Research.

Award Number: DE-SC0024161
Project Dates: 09/01/2023 - 09/01/2027

Aerenson, Travis, Daniel McCoy, Gregory Elsaesser, et al. “Global Models Predict Clouds at the Wrong Time of Day: Does It Matter for Radiation and Climate?” Science Advances 11, no. 50 (n.d.): eady3236.

Nugent, J. M., H. Brown, A. Kirby, et al. “Overview of the Nephele Perturbed Parameter Ensemble for Aerosol-Cloud Interactions in E3SMv3.” Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 18, no. 2 (2026): e2025MS004989.

UW Student Funded by DOE Grant Nephele Perturbed Process Ensemble (E3SMv3) Available for Community Use

The Center makes extensive use of the NCAR Wyoming Supercomputing Center for its computational experiments through the Wyoming-NCAR Alliance. The major facility is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and managed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.