"Ocean Modeling in the High Desert"

3:30 p.m. Thursday, March 14, 2019
499 Dirac Science Library

Los Alamos National Laboratory
Computational Physics and Methods Group

Abstract:

Climate research at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) includes the development of ocean, sea-ice, atmosphere, land-vegetation and land-ice models. The ability to run high-resolution global simulations efficiently on the world’s largest computers is a priority for the DOE. In this talk I will describe my experiences as a lead developer for a new variable-resolution ocean model, the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS-Ocean), which is a component of the DOE’s newly released Energy, Exascale, Earth System Model (E3SM). Model components must be thoroughly validated in numerous settings, from idealized domains to real-world simulations. Output is compared to the historical record of satellite and shipboard observations, and other ocean models. Applications of E3SM include the simulation of 20th-century and future climate scenarios, as well as special configurations where model resolution is enhanced in regions of particular interest, like coastal areas, the Arctic, or below Antarctic ice shelves.