The BRIDGE HadCM3 family of climate models: HadCM3@Bristol v1.0

Understanding natural and anthropogenic climate change processes involves using computational models that represent the main components of the Earth system: the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land surface. These models have become increasingly computationally expensive as resolution is increased and more complex process representations are included. However, to gain robust insight into how climate may respond to a given forcing, and to meaningfully quantify the associated uncertainty, it is often required to use either or both ensemble approaches and very long integrations. For this reason, more computationally efficient models can be very valuable tools. Here we provide a comprehensive overview of the suite of climate models based around the HadCM3 coupled general circulation model. This model was developed at the UK Met Office and has been heavily used during the last 15 years for a range of future (and past) climate change studies, but has now been largely superseded for many scientific studies by more recently developed models. However, it continues to be extensively used by various institutions, including the BRIDGE (Bristol Research Initiative for the Dynamic Global Environment) research group at the University of Bristol, who have made modest adaptations to the base HadCM3 model over time. These adaptations mean that the original documentation is not entirely representative, and several other relatively undocumented configurations are in use. We therefore describe the key features of a number of configurations of the HadCM3 climate model family, which together make up HadCM3@Bristol version 1.0. In order to differentiate variants that have undergone development at BRIDGE, we have introduced the letter B into the model nomenclature. We include descriptions of the atmosphere- only model (HadAM3B), the coupled model with a low-resolution ocean (HadCM3BL), the high-resolution atmosphere- only model (HadAM3BH), and the regional model (HadRM3B). These also include three versions of the land surface scheme. By comparing with observational datasets, we show that these models produce a good representation of many aspects of the climate system, including the land and sea surface temperatures, precipitation, ocean circulation, and vegetation. This evaluation, combined with the relatively fast computational speed (up to 1000 times faster than some CMIP6 models), motivates continued development and scientific use of the HadCM3B family of coupled climate models, predominantly for quantifying uncertainty and for long multi-millennial-scale simulations

Networking Across the Supply Chain: Transportation Innovations in Local and Regional Food Systems

Report Executive Summary: Until recently, local and regional food system development efforts have emphasized small scale direct marketing activities, while food freight transportation policy and planning have primarily focused on distribution infrastructure for large-scale commodity products. As the demand for local food continues to increase, innovative and scale-appropriate infrastructure and expertise are needed to respond to the market pull. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) identified a need to direct applied research resources to focus on transportation and distribution issues in order to facilitate effective growth in local and regional food systems. Through collaboration between USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) a new approach emerged. The USDA and CIAS researchers saw a great need for providing an opportunity for networking and sharing of perspectives among the diverse groups of regional food suppliers and the established freight transportation providers. The collaboration led to the Networking Across the Supply Chain (NASC) conference that served as the venue to accomplish the objectives of fostering information exchange, networking, and collaboration between the participants of the food supply chain. This report presents the conference overview with its key themes and findings as well as emergent strategies and innovative solutions to help bring regional food to regional markets

Satiating the Demand: Planning for Alternative Models of Regional Food Distribution

Despite the relative absence of wholesale distribution in much of the planning profession's academic and grey literature, emerging models promise to remake the relationship between producers and their regional markets. In this article, key lessons from the value(s) chain literature are illustrated with examples from comparative case studies con¬ducted by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural System to acquaint professional planners and allied professionals with strategies for imbuing mid- to high-volume local food distribution with normative values such as transparency and fairness. The research presented here is not a comprehensive analysis of regional wholesale food distribution. Rather, we have focused on organizational, logistical, and marketing characteristics of local and regional food value(s) chains. We utilize an exploratory comparative case study method to identify innovations in food distribution focusing on midtier food value(s) chains. We then describe larger system interventions that planners could employ to better accommodate midtier food distribution needs in the regional planning and food regulatory environment. These interventions include documentation of existing wholesale food system infrastructure; incorporation of agricultural industry clusters into regional economic development planning; cultivation of regional culinary identities to enhance marketing and branding efforts; and collaboration with policy makers and food safety regulators to foster zoning and regulation that protect public safety and welfare and build the capacity and market access of local food entrepreneurs