While global climate models attempt to capture the complex interactions of air, sea and land on a planetary scale, they may not provide sufficient information on a regional scale for practical purposes. Regional climate models might provide more useful information for planners. Global climate models use about 30 data points for the continental United States, while regional models use about 800 data points.
Regional models represent mountains better than the global models.
While mountains are important for climate and weather, global models smear them, making something like the Rocky Mountain chain insignificant. Global models also have difficulty defining coastlines, but the regional models can resolve the coastal area. The Penn State researchers are using a global climate model called Genesis, developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a regional climate model developed by Penn State and NCAR to investigate the climate change differences found when modeled on a planetary or regional scale. We also want to understand how the variables in the two models differ over various regions within the United States. The regional model Jenkins uses was originally designed for weather forecasting over short periods but has been modified to investigate long-term climate.