4.3 Comparing the physical content

SimClimat has a much simpler physical content than the climate models participating in CMIP (table 2), which allows it to be much faster. It represents the atmosphere in a much coarser way (0D instead of 3D), but couples more components, notably the ice sheets and the carbon cycle. To this extent, it is rather analogous to a model Earth system (figure 14, purple frame). This allows SimClimat to represent climate changes at geological time scales.

Table 2: Table identifying the main differences between climate models participating in CMIP and SimClimat's physical model.

Models

Climate model participating in CMIP

SimClimat Atmospheric grid dimension