grid mesh

A set of points at which a mathematical model of weather or climate forecasting spatially distributes and defines the various variables it uses. The distance between two adjacent grid points represents the spatial resolution of the model in question. At present, general circulation models (GCMs) achieve resolutions of between 10 and 20 km. The challenge in the coming years - as the computing capacity of supercomputers continues to increase - is to bring the resolution of GCMs down to 5 kilometers.