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Ambitious partnership needed for reliable climate prediction

Current global climate models struggle to represent precipitation and related extreme events, with serious implications for the physical evidence base to support climate actions. A leap to kilometre-scale models could overcome this shortcoming but requires collaboration on an unprecedented scale.

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Fig. 1: The realism of k-scale global climate modelling.

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Contributions

J.S. led the writing of the manuscript, drawing on expertise from all the authors; she also contributed expert knowledge of tropical convection and its role in the global climate system. P. Bates provided expertise in hydrological modelling; P. Bauer provided expertise in exascale computing and digital technologies; S.B. provided evidence of the impact of k-scale regional climate projections; T.P. provided expertise on multi-scale atmospheric dynamics and climate predictability; G.S. provided expertise on clouds and Earth observation; B.S. contributed pioneering global k-scale simulations; T.S. provided expertise in IPCC climate evidence base; and G.T. provided supporting evidence for k-scale models based on climate applications. All authors reviewed, revised and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Julia Slingo.

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Slingo, J., Bates, P., Bauer, P. et al. Ambitious partnership needed for reliable climate prediction. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 499–503 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01384-8

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