In June, SRMGI (The Degrees Initiative) supported Chris Lennard’s trip to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, where he worked for a week with Dr Simone Tilmes and her colleague Dr Jimy Dudhia. Chris is a climatologist at the University of Cape Town and is co-PI of the South Africa Degees Modelling Fund (DMF) project. Through the DMF process, he started working with Dr Simone Tilmes, an atmospheric chemist and SRM modelling expert who volunteers her time as one of the research collaborators for the DMF teams.
Together they began writing code that would allow the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF), a powerful regional climate model, to simulate the impacts that SRM may have on regional climates. There is still much work to be done to finish the code but this is an important step towards more powerful regional simulation of the potential impacts of SRM.