Development of the first nonhydrostatic nested-grid grid-point global atmospheric modeling system on parallel machines
This is the final report of a three-year, Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Evaluating the importance of global and regional climate response to increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases requires a comprehensive global atmospheric modeling system (GAMS) capable of simulations over a wide range of atmospheric circulations, from complex terrain to continental scales, on high-performance computers. Unfortunately, all of the existing global circulation models (GCMs) do not meet this requirements, because they suffer from one or more of the following three shortcomings: (1) use of the hydrostatic approximation, which makes the models potentially ill-posed; (2) lack of a nested-grid (or multi-grid) capability, which makes it difficult to consistently evaluate the regional climate response to the global warming, and (3) spherical spectral (opposed to grid-point finite-difference) representation of model variables, which hinders model performance for parallel machine applications. The end product of the research is a highly modularized, multi-gridded, self-calibratable (for further parameterization development) global modeling system with state-of-the-science physics and chemistry. This system will be suitable for a suite of atmospheric problems: from local circulations to climate, from thunderstorms to global cloud radiative forcing, from urban pollution to global greenhouse trace gases, and from the guiding of field experiments to coupling with ocean models. It will also provide a unique testbed for high-performance computing architecture.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Assistant Secretary for Management and Administration, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 674906
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR--98-2231; ON: DE99000830
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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