ECHAM is a

general circulation model A general circulation model (GCM) is a type of climate model. It employs a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean. It uses the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms f ...

(GCM) developed by the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the research organisations of the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...

. It was created by modifying global forecast models developed by

ECMWF The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; an ...

to be used for climate research. The model was given its name as a combination of its origin (the 'EC' being short for '

') and the place of development of its parameterisation package, Hamburg. The default configuration of the model resolves the atmosphere up to 10 hPa (primarily used to study the lower atmosphere), but it can be reconfigured to 0.01 hPa for use in studying the

stratosphere The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air ...

and lower

mesosphere The mesosphere (; ) is the third layer of the atmosphere, directly above the stratosphere and directly below the thermosphere. In the mesosphere, temperature decreases as altitude increases. This characteristic is used to define its limits: it ...

. Different versions of ECHAM, primarily different configurations of ECHAM5, have been the basis of many publications, listed on the ECHAM5 websit

ECHAM5

Compared to its predecessor, ECHAM4, it is more portable and flexible (it is now written in the programming language Fortran 95), and because of both major and minor changes to the different parts of code that it uses, it produces a significantly different simulated climate. MPI-ECHAM5 was used in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, alongside many other GCMs from different countries. In the data of this report, it is referred to with the abbreviation MPEH5. It appears to be one of the more accurate GCMs.

ECHAM6

ECHAM6 is currently the most advanced version of the ECHAM models. ECHAM6 is an atmospheric general circulation model, and as such focuses on the coupling between diabatic processes and large-scale circulations, both of which are ultimately driven by radiative forcing. It consists of a dry spectral-transform dynamical core, a transport model for scalar quantities other than temperature and surface pressure, a suite of physical parameterizations for the representation of diabatic processes, as well as boundary data sets for externalized parameters, such as trace gas and

aerosol An aerosol is a suspension (chemistry), suspension of fine solid particles or liquid Drop (liquid), droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or Human impact on the environment, anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog o ...

distributions, tabulations of gas absorption optical properties, temporal variations in spectral

solar irradiance Solar irradiance is the power per unit area (surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre (W/ ...

, land-surface properties, etc. The major changes relative to ECHAM5 include: An improved representation of radiative transfer in the shortwave (or solar) part of the spectrum; a completely new description of aerosols; an improved representation of surface albedo, including the treatment of melt-ponds on

sea ice Sea ice arises as seawater freezes. Because ice is less dense than water, it floats on the ocean's surface (as does fresh water ice, which has an even lower density). Sea ice covers about 7% of the Earth's surface and about 12% of the world's oce ...

; and a greatly improved representation of the middle-atmosphere as part of the standard model. In addition, minor changes have been made in the representation of convective processes, and through the choice of a slightly different vertical discretization within the troposphere, as well as changed model parameters.

References

Numerical climate and weather models {{climate-stub