CMDV Liaison Positions between NGEE Projects and ACME Established

The Climate Model Development and Validation (CMDV; https://climatemodeling.science.energy.gov/news/new-funding-opportunity-announced) activity recently provided funds to support four 0.5 FTE liaison positions. The goal is to facilitate interactions and collaboration on land surface model development activities among NGEE Arctic, NGEE Tropics, and ACME. These positions include: (1) a software engineer focused on hydrologic model developments; (2) a software engineer focused on vegetation model developments; (3) a scientist focused on biogeochemistry and thermal-hydrology developments; and (4) a scientist focused on global vegetation dynamics. Each of the projects has prioritized specific model developments in support of their scientific objectives with potential value for the other projects. The liaisons will aim to build the foundation for future development and enable process model developments tested within the NGEEs to be more rapidly applied at the global scale through direct use of code, development of reduced order models, and implementation as regional benchmark models. At the same time, ACME innovations in process representation and sub-grid structure will be more readily accessible to the NGEEs. Through direct working relationships across projects, participation in science meetings across the projects, and explicit requirements for communication and coordination, these positions will foster more efficient and timely integration of developing BER land model capabilities.