PNNL

Abigail Snyder, an Earth scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), joined the Seventh Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP7) Strategic Ensemble Design Task Team. The team will focus on ensemble design and interpretation to help scope CMIP7.

CMIP is a collaborative international project led by the World Climate Research Programme. Currently in its seventh iteration, CMIP brings researchers across disciplines together to better understand past, present, and future changes in the Earth’s climate. The CMIP teams perform experiments with climate models, assess the performance of the models, and work to standardize model outputs available for public use.

The Strategic Ensemble Design Task Team will “consider how future best strategy for CMIP should address those evolving societal demands which can be met only by process-resolving computational Earth System Modelling.” The team will review existing modeling protocols to identify strengths, weaknesses, and knowledge gaps. They will explore options to improve the accuracy of models for answering societally-relevant climate questions.

“I’m very grateful to be a member of this task team,” said Snyder. “The experiments run in CMIP result in data that are widely used by the human-Earth system modeling community in the years between CMIP eras. My own research has benefitted tremendously from the open availability of CMIP data. I look forward to contributing to the CMIP7 effort with my experience as a data user.”

Snyder earned a PhD, MA, and BS in mathematics, all from the University of Pittsburgh. Since joining PNNL in 2016, Snyder has worked on projects modeling many aspects of the coupled human-Earth system. These include emulating many of the process-based Earth System models participating in CMIP for faster and more flexible use with the Global Change Analysis Model.