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Climate Computer Modeling Heats Up
September 09, 2008New "petascale" computer models depicting detailed climate dynamics, and building the foundation for the next generation of complex climate models, are in the offing.
Researchers at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmospheric Studies (COLA) in Calverton, Md., and the University of California at Berkeley are using a $1.4 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to generate the new models.
The development of powerful supercomputers capable of analyzing decades of data in the blink of an eye marks a technological milestone, say the scientists, capable of bringing comprehensive changes to science, medicine, engineering, and businesses worldwide.
The speed of supercomputing is measured in how many calculations can be performed in a given second.
Petascale computers can make 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, a staggeringly high rate even when compared to supercomputers.
Although true "peta" processing is currently rare, the anticipated availability of petascale computing offers a golden opportunity for climate scientists to advance Earth system science and help to improve quality of life on the planet, the researchers believe.
"The limiting factor to more reliable climate predictions at higher resolution is not scientific ideas, but computational capacity to implement those ideas," said Jay Fein, NSF program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "This project is an important step forward in providing the most useful scientifically-based climate change information to society for adapting to climate change."
Researchers once had assumed that climate can be predicted independently of weather, that is, with weather having no impact on climate prediction. Now they're finding that weather has a profound impact on climate, a result that's integral to the drive to improve weather and climate predictions and climate change projections.
With this boost in computing capabilities, research team member Ben Kirtman, a meteorologist at RSMAS, has developed a novel weather and climate modeling strategy, or "interactive ensembles," designed to isolate the interactions between weather and climate.
These interactive ensembles for weather and climate modeling are being applied to one of the nation's premier climate change models, NCAR's Community Climate System Model (CCSM), the current operational model used by NOAA's climate forecast system (CFS).
The CCSM is also a community model used by hundreds of researchers, and is one of the climate models used in the Nobel Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments.
The research serves as a pilot program to prepare for the implementation of more intense computational systems, which currently remain a scientific and engineering challenge.
"This marks the first time that we will have the computational resources available to address these scientific challenges in a comprehensive manner," said Kirtman. "The information from this project will serve as a cornerstone for petascale computing in our field, and help to advance the study of the interactions between weather and climate phenomena on a global scale."
While this research focuses on climate science, he said, by-products of the work are applicable to similar modeling challenges in other science and engineering fields, particularly the geosciences.
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
The speed of supercomputing is measured in how many calculations can be performed in a given second.
Petascale computers can make 1,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second, a staggeringly high rate even when compared to supercomputers.
Although true "peta" processing is currently rare, the anticipated availability of petascale computing offers a golden opportunity for climate scientists to advance Earth system science and help to improve quality of life on the planet, the researchers believe.
"The limiting factor to more reliable climate predictions at higher resolution is not scientific ideas, but computational capacity to implement those ideas," said Jay Fein, NSF program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "This project is an important step forward in providing the most useful scientifically-based climate change information to society for adapting to climate change."
Researchers once had assumed that climate can be predicted independently of weather, that is, with weather having no impact on climate prediction. Now they're finding that weather has a profound impact on climate, a result that's integral to the drive to improve weather and climate predictions and climate change projections.
With this boost in computing capabilities, research team member Ben Kirtman, a meteorologist at RSMAS, has developed a novel weather and climate modeling strategy, or "interactive ensembles," designed to isolate the interactions between weather and climate.
These interactive ensembles for weather and climate modeling are being applied to one of the nation's premier climate change models, NCAR's Community Climate System Model (CCSM), the current operational model used by NOAA's climate forecast system (CFS).
The CCSM is also a community model used by hundreds of researchers, and is one of the climate models used in the Nobel Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments.
The research serves as a pilot program to prepare for the implementation of more intense computational systems, which currently remain a scientific and engineering challenge.
"This marks the first time that we will have the computational resources available to address these scientific challenges in a comprehensive manner," said Kirtman. "The information from this project will serve as a cornerstone for petascale computing in our field, and help to advance the study of the interactions between weather and climate phenomena on a global scale."
While this research focuses on climate science, he said, by-products of the work are applicable to similar modeling challenges in other science and engineering fields, particularly the geosciences.
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
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The scientific ability to quickly and accurately identify species through DNA "barcoding" is being embraced and applied by a growing legion of global authorities - from medical and agricultural researchers to police and customs authorities to palaeontologists and others.
Past climate of the northern Antarctic Peninsular informs global warming debate
The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented.
Nitrogen loss threatens desert plant life, study shows
As the climate gets warmer, arid soils lose nitrogen as gas, reports a new Cornell study. That could lead to deserts with even less plant life than they sustain today, say the researchers.
Deep creep means milder, more frequent earthquakes along Southern California's San Jacinto fault
With an average of four mini-earthquakes per day, Southern California's San Jacinto fault constantly adjusts to make it a less likely candidate for a major earthquake than its quiet neighbor to the east, the Southern San Andreas fault, according to an article in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Researchers Hail Innovative Plan to Save Rainforest, Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
An innovative proposal by the Ecuadorian government to protect an untouched, oil rich region of Amazon rainforest is a precedent-setting and potentially economically viable approach, says a team of environmental researchers from the University of Maryland, the World Resources Institute and Save America's Forests.
Paleoecologists offer new insight into how climate change will affect organisms
An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science written by a team of ecologists, including Robert Booth, assistant professor of earth and environmental science at Lehigh University, examines some of the potential problems with current prediction methods and calls for the use of a range of approaches when predicting the impact of climate change on organisms.
Report on US-China collaboration on carbon capture and sequestration
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Julio Friedmann, in collaboration with the Center for American Progress, the Asia Society Center and with partner Monitor Group, today released the report, "A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration."
Study gives clearer picture of how land-use changes affect U.S. climate
Researchers say regional surface temperatures can be affected by land use, suggesting that local and regional strategies, such as creating green spaces and buffer zones in and around urban areas, could be a tool in addressing climate change.
Calm before the spawn: Climate change and coral spawning
What's the point of setting up marine reserves to protect coral reefs from pollution, ship groundings and overfishing if climate change could cause far more damage? A study published this week in London in Proceedings of the Royal Society B provides the answer.
Iron controls patterns of nitrogen fixation in the Atlantic
Scientists including researchers from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the University of Essex have discovered that interactions between iron supply, transported through the atmosphere from deserts, and large-scale oceanic circulation control the availability of a crucial nutrient, nitrogen, in the Atlantic.
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