Workshop on the Initialization of High-Resolution Earth System Models April 9 – 10, 2018

From weather to climate timescales, weeks to decades, societal needs require detailed predictions of the atmosphere, ocean, and land-surface to facilitate informed planning. Central to this scientific endeavor is the ability to accurately initialize the earth system models (ESMs), since frequently the skill in forecasts, predictions, and projections depends on the quality of the initialization. However, initialization of high-resolution ESMs remains an outstanding challenge, particularly for the climate modeling community where initialization has received relatively less attention and where longer-term information is needed. This need, after a review of previous workshop outcomes, led the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to host a workshop that focused exclusively on the opportunities that data assimilation (DA) and, specifically, coupled data assimilation (CDA) might provide to the ESM enterprise with particular attention toward initialization.