The Energy Exascale Earth System Model Version 3: 2. Overview of the Coupled System
Abstract The Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 3 (E3SMv3) represents the latest advancement in Earth system modeling developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Building upon previous versions, E3SMv3 introduces significant updates across its coupled components to enhance capability and improve fidelity. The atmosphere component incorporates advancements in chemistry, aerosol‐cloud interactions, convection, and microphysics. The ocean features a new time‐stepping scheme and a higher‐resolution unstructured mesh with sub‐ice‐shelf cavities, while the sea ice model integrates advanced snow and ice physics for more realistic cryospheric simulations. The land model introduces prognostic vegetation dynamics and a new sub‐grid topographic treatment of solar radiation. A new tri‐grid configuration harmonizes the horizontal grids of the land and river components for improved process coupling. It is enabled by a new non‐linear remapping between the atmosphere and land. E3SMv3 underwent extensive testing through a comprehensive simulation campaign, including pre‐industrial control, idealized experiments, and historical simulations spanning 1850–2024. The model demonstrates significant improvements in simulating the evolution of the historical surface temperature, particularly addressing the “pothole cooling” bias in earlier versions. Reduced aerosol‐related forcing contributes to more realistic radiative forcing and better alignment with the observational record. Ocean heat content (OHC) and sea ice trends are also improved as a result.
Authors
- Yun Qian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4821-1934)
- Nicole Jeffery (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2189-7139)
- Mathew Maltrud (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1738-7489)
- Christopher R. Terai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2433-0472)
- Chengzhu Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9632-0716)
- RA Jacob
- Naser Mahfouz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7097-1430)
- Hyun‐Gyu Kang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6073-918X)
- Elizabeth Hunke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7033-6031)
- Susannah M. Burrows (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0745-7252)
- Jean‐Christophe Golaz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1616-5435)
- Sarat Sreepathi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4978-9423)
- Mark A. Taylor (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9267-2554)
- Salil Mahajan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5767-8590)
- T. Roser W. Zhang
- Katherine Smith
- Charles S. Zender (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0129-8024)
- Xue Zheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9372-1776)
- Andrew Bradley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4687-198X)
- Noel D. Keen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3607-3554)
- Guang J. Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9712-5226)
- Xianglei Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7129-614X)
- James Foucar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2036-8032)
- Renata McCoy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6090-0057)
- Alice Barthel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2481-8646)
- Andrew Roberts (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0394-8396)
- Jonathan D. Wolfe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1322-1385)
- Oksana Guba (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7242-7001)
- Luke Van Roekel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1418-5686)
- Balwinder Singh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6798-3097)
- Peter Caldwell
- Wandi Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7106-8131)
- Walter M. Hannah (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4811-1928)
- Darin Comeau (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4758-4253)
- Andrew G. Salinger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4692-6813)
- Tian Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1582-4005)
- Ryan M. Forsyth (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1689-1800)
- Peter Thornton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4759-5158)
- Stephen Price (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6878-2553)
- Tom Vo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2461-0191)
- Azamat Mametjanov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7316-4231)
- Michael A. Brunke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2677-7446)
- Jinbo Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3003-9155)
- David C. Bader (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3210-339X)
- Gautam Bisht (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6641-7595)
- Shixuan Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5723-9747)
- Erin E. Thomas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3146-8998)
- Tony Bartoletti
- Adrian K. Turner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6796-4187)
- Michael J. Prather (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9442-8109)
- Lai-Yung Ruby Leung (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3221-9467)
- Mark Petersen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7170-7511)
- Carolyn Begeman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9828-1741)
- James J. Benedict (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5115-5131)
- Xylar Asay‐Davis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1990-892X)
- Hsiang‐He Lee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5140-7324)
- Meng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6467-0757)
- Yuying Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9638-2282)
- Kai Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0457-6368)
- Xiaoliang Song (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3113-969X)
- Johannes Mülmenstädt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1105-6678)
- Wuyin Lin
- Jiwen Fan
- Shaocheng Xie
- Xubin Zeng
- Hui Wan
- Y. Feng
- Sean Santos
- Chih-Chieh-Jack Chen
- Mingxuan Wu
- Jiwoo Lee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0016-7199)
- Qi Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2959-0203)
- Yunpeng Shan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2413-3371)
- Xiaohong Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3994-5955)
- Hailong Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1994-4402)
Institutions
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- Argonne National Laboratory (US)
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US)
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (US)
- Princeton University (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Sandia National Laboratories (US)
- NSF NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory (US)
- Irvine University (US)
- University of Houston (US)
- Desert Research Institute (US)
- Texas A&M University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
- Published
- 2026-04-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1029/2025ms005302
- Primary Topic
- Climate variability and models
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Office of Science
- Biological and Environmental Research