The demand for local-scale weather and climate information is rapidly increasing in the face of climate change and growing societal vulnerabilities. Convection-permitting models (CPMs) with kilometer-scale grid spacing have become indispensable for investigating extreme events, fine-scale processes, and their climate responses. While CPMs have traditionally been applied to regional domains, advances in computing now make global storm-resolving simulations possible, enabling explicit representation of convective storms and other mesoscale phenomena.
This session highlights the opportunities and challenges of kilometer-scale climate modelling across both regional and global domains. We aim to showcase how high-resolution models enhance the representation of local processes, illuminate cross-scale interactions, and improve understanding of extremes. By bringing together the regional CPM community (e.g. CORDEX Flagship Pilot Studies) and the emerging global storm-resolving community (e.g. DYAMOND, nextGEMS, Destination Earth, EERIE), the session seeks to foster dialogue, synergy, and collaboration. Contributions using variable-resolution frameworks, which connect regional detail with the global Earth system context are also of interest.
We invite submissions that:
1. Apply regional or global CPMs to advance understanding of extremes and demonstrate added value over coarser models.
2. Bridge regional and global frameworks through nesting or variable resolution approaches.
3. Investigate cross-scale feedback between convection and large-scale circulation.
4. Assess climate change signals and scale-dependent extreme event responses.
5. Advance evaluation, model development, and understanding of biases in CPMs.
6. Address uncertainty and computational challenges, including ensembles and novel strategies for long-term simulations.
By uniting diverse initiatives, this session aims to push the frontiers of extreme events research and climate process understanding at unprecedented resolution, while building stronger links between regional and global modelling communities.
Bjorn Stevens