Multi-decadal Atmospheric Modeling for Europe Yields Multi-purpose Data

Regional atmospheric models have matured in the past few years. They now find broad applications that range from process studies, reconstruction of recent and paleoclimates, simulation of pathways and deposition of anthropogenic matter, construction of plausible scenarios of future climate change, and regional weather analysis. The initial major problem-namely, the illposed boundary value problem--has been efficiently fixed by including a sponge zone that ensures the consistency of the interior flow with the boundary conditions at the outflow boundaries, or by introducing large-scale control in the interior. With these setups, regional models may now be integrated stably over many decades and thereby provide information on spatial and temporal scales not sufficiently resolved by present-day global climate models and weather analyses.