SAM is a convection-permitting (or cloud-permitting, or convection-resolving, or cloud-resolving) atmospheric model. It simulates atmospheric motions on scales from tens to hundreds of meters up to hundreds or thousands of kilometers and is used primarily as a process model to study phenomena that are marginally-resolved or unresolved in global general circulation models.
- Simulate tornadoes
- Study cumulus convection in different environments
- Study hurricane genesis
- Try to understand why tropical islands are so rainy
- Model pollutant dispersal (experimental)
- Run near-global cloud resolving simulations (experimental)
- Run case studies of specific hurricanes (experimental)
Yes! SAM cannot
- Simulate coupled atmosphere-ocean dynamics
- Run on non-Cartesian domains (so no global simulations)
- Run with orography (so no mountain meteorology)
- Easily initialize itself from global forecast models (so limited usefulness for case studies or forecasting)
- Run in 2D axisymmetric mode (so no cheap hurricane simulations)
(Although the experimental version of the model can do 2-4). If you're interested in any of 2-5, CM1 (https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/people/bryan/cm1/) or WRF (https://www.mmm.ucar.edu/weather-research-and-forecasting-model) are good alternatives.
Me, Raphael Rousseau-Rizzi, Rohini Shivamoggi, Ziwei Li, Martin Velez-Pardo (students); Daniel Koll, Janni Yuval (postdocs); Tim Cronin, Kerry Emanuel, Paul O'Gorman
SAM is source-controlled but available to anybody. To get SAM, email the maintainer (Marat Khairoutdinov, http://rossby.msrc.sunysb.edu/~marat/) and ask to be added to the SAM users list. He usually responds quickly.