TRACK: Earth, Atmosphere, and Oceans TITLE: Advancing Coupled Carbon-Cycle and Climate Models: Progress and Future Challenges DATE: Monday, February 20, 2006 TIME: 9:45 AM - 12:45 PM ORGANIZERS: Wilfred M. Post, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; David Erickson, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Anthony King, Oak Ridge National Laboratory   PARTICIPANTS:   * = invited, not yet confirmed. Wilfred M. Post (Moderator), Oak Ridge National Laboratory Anthony King (Speaker), Oak Ridge National Laboratory Significance of Carbon Cycle on Climate and the Reverse Atul K. Jain (Speaker), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Human Influence on the Terrestrial Carbon Budget in North America David Erickson (Speaker), Oak Ridge National Laboratory Global Coupled Climate-Carbon Models: CCSM3 Coupled with the Integrated Biosphere Simulator Christian Reick (Speaker), Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Germany Simulation of the Feedback Between Carbon Cycle and Climate, 1860-2100 Govindasamy Bala (Speaker), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Consequences of Releasing All the Estimated Fossil Fuels by Year 2300 Peter Thornton (Speaker), National Center for Atmospheric Research Nitrogen Cycle Interactions with Carbon and Climate Feedbacks Akihiko Ito (Speaker), Frontier Research Center for Global Change, Japan Development of the Frontier Research Center for Global Change Coupled Climate and Carbon Cycle Model Wilfred M. Post (Speaker), Oak Ridge National Laboratory Feedback Time Scales, Diagnostics, Computational Requirements, and Other Future Challenges of Carbon Cycle: Climate Simulation AVAILABLE ABSTRACTS: No available abstracts. SYNOPSIS: Feedbacks between the global carbon cycle and the atmosphere-climate system occur at time scales from minutes to centuries. However, carbon cycle processes at the longer time scales of decades to centuries are not well represented in coupled global carbon-climate models at present. Terrestrial processes such as vegetation and land-cover alteration, invasive species, altered fire regimes, large-scale insect outbreaks, nitrogen deposition, succession, competitive interaction, herbivore cycles, and soil development have significant impacts on the global cycling of carbon at these time scales and may strongly impact climate. Similarly, incorporation of marine biogeochemical processes affecting carbon cycling such as ecological response to dust inputs, fresh-water input from rivers, nutrient availability associated with ice dynamics, and ocean circulation is needed to improve the predictability of climate models at decadal time scales and into the 21st century. This symposium presents concepts and algorithm development in coupling terrestrial and marine carbon biogeochemistry with the Earth’s climate system that advance current coupled carbon-climate model capabilities to meet the challenging requirements of climate change prediction.