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Tightening the belt: investigating the impact of high resolution at reduced computational cost

Presentation Date
Wednesday, August 7, 2024 at 1:16pm - Wednesday, August 7, 2024 at 1:22pm
Authors

Lead Presenter

Abstract

The transition to global storm-resolving modeling is upon us, but there are many challenges that need to be addressed before these ultra-high-resolution models are routinely used for climate simulation. The main limiting factor continues to be the computational resources needed to conduct global simulations at high resolution. Computational constraints limit the number of simulations, their duration, and the number of researchers who have the capability to run them. To bridge the gap between conventional climate modeling and global storm-resolving models, there are a few options that range from small-domain, small grid-spacing models to regional models to global models with unconventional configurations. Most of these alternatives are appropriate for studies of phenomena at high resolution, but they are less useful for understanding emergent behavior at large scales. One option to investigate the larger scales is to embed high-resolution regions within coarse global models. By refining the mesh in a specific region, it allows analysis of the model solution at high resolution while also permitting emergent behavior at large scales. This presentation provides an example using a configuration of the Community Atmosphere Model that has 15km grid spacing around the entire equatorial belt. This provides a mesoscale-resolving tropical climate that interacts with the coarse-resolution extratropics. The total number of grid points is less than a quarter of a global 15km configuration, and a little less than a global 27km configuration. Comparisons with coarse resolution simulations are used to investigate the impact of the high-resolution tropics on the global climate including aspects of variability both within and remote from the high-resolution region. 

Presentation File(s)
Category
Strengthening EESM Integrated Modeling Framework – Towards a Digital Earth
Funding Program Area(s)