The Planet Simulator: Towards a user friendly model

Abstract

The Planet Simulator is a Model of Intermediate Complexity (MIC) which can be used to run climate and paleo-climate simulations for time scales up to 10 thousand years or more in an acceptable real time. The priorities in development are set to speed, easy handling and portability. Its modular structure allows a problem dependent con figuration. Adaptions exist for the atmospheres of Mars and of Saturn's moon Titan. Common coupling interfaces enable the addition of ocean models, ice models, vegetation and more. An interactive mode with a Model Starter (MoSt) and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) can be used to select a model configuration from the available hierarchy, set its parameters and inspect atmospheric fields while changing model parameters on the fly. This is especially useful for teaching, debugging and tuning of parameterizations. This paper gives an overview of the model's features. The complete model including sources and documentation is available at (www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/plasim).