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Title: CAM-SE: A scalable spectral element dynamical core for the Community Atmosphere Model.

Journal Article · · International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [5];  [1];  [4];  [3]
  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
  2. IBM and National Center for Atmospheric Research
  3. ORNL
  4. Sandia National Laboratories (SNL)
  5. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) version 5 includes a spectral element dynamical core option from NCAR's High-Order Method Modeling Environment. It is a continuous Galerkin spectral finite element method designed for fully unstructured quadrilateral meshes. The current configurations in CAM are based on the cubed-sphere grid. The main motivation for including a spectral element dynamical core is to improve the scalability of CAM by allowing quasi-uniform grids for the sphere that do not require polar filters. In addition, the approach provides other state-of-the-art capabilities such as improved conservation properties. Spectral elements are used for the horizontal discretization, while most other aspects of the dynamical core are a hybrid of well tested techniques from CAM's finite volume and global spectral dynamical core options. Here we first give a overview of the spectral element dynamical core as used in CAM. We then give scalability and performance results from CAM running with three different dynamical core options within the Community Earth System Model, using a pre-industrial time-slice configuration. We focus on high resolution simulations of 1/4 degree, 1/8 degree, and T340 spectral truncation.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
DE-AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1036556
Journal Information:
International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, Vol. 26, Issue 1; ISSN 1094-3420
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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  • Zerroukat, Mohamed; Wood, Nigel; Staniforth, Andrew
  • Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 131, Issue 611 https://doi.org/10.1256/qj.04.97
journal October 2005

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Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
CONFIGURATION
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
PERFORMANCE
RESOLUTION
SIMULATION
CESM
CAM
HOMME
high resolution climate modeling