Introducing Enabling Computational Tools to the Climate Sciences: Multi-Resolution Climate Modeling with Adaptive Cubed-Sphere Grids

Jablonowski, Christiane¹ 

[1] Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)

关键词: Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR);    Chombo;    Community Atmosphere Model (CAM);    refinement criterion;    variable-resolution climate modeling;    high-order finite-volume methods;    non-hydrostatic;    atmospheric dynamical core;    shallow water;    cubed-sphere grid;    tropical cyclone;    test case;    physics-dynamics coupling;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1195406
RP-ID  :  DOE--UM0003990-1
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1195406

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

The research investigates and advances strategies how to bridge the scale discrepancies between local, regional and global phenomena in climate models without the prohibitive computational costs of global cloud-resolving simulations. In particular, the research explores new frontiers in computational geoscience by introducing high-order Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) techniques into climate research. AMR and statically-adapted variable-resolution approaches represent an emerging trend for atmospheric models and are likely to become the new norm in future-generation weather and climate models. The research advances the understanding of multi-scale interactions in the climate system and showcases a pathway how to model these interactions effectively with advanced computational tools, like the Chombo AMR library developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The research is interdisciplinary and combines applied mathematics, scientific computing and the atmospheric sciences. In this research project, a hierarchy of high-order atmospheric models on cubed-sphere computational grids have been developed that serve as an algorithmic prototype for the finite-volume solution-adaptive Chombo-AMR approach. The foci of the investigations have lied on the characteristics of both static mesh adaptations and dynamically-adaptive grids that can capture flow fields of interest like tropical cyclones. Six research themes have been chosen. These are (1) the introduction of adaptive mesh refinement techniques into the climate sciences, (2) advanced algorithms for nonhydrostatic atmospheric dynamical cores, (3) an assessment of the interplay between resolved-scale dynamical motions and subgrid-scale physical parameterizations, (4) evaluation techniques for atmospheric model hierarchies, (5) the comparison of AMR refinement strategies and (6) tropical cyclone studies with a focus on multi-scale interactions and variable-resolution modeling. The results of this research project demonstrate significant advances in all six research areas. The major conclusions are that statically-adaptive variable-resolution modeling is currently becoming mature in the climate sciences, and that AMR holds outstanding promise for future-generation weather and climate models on high-performance computing architectures.