Exascale Computing is Expected to Support a Wide Array of Climate Science Studies

Gaining an understanding of the complex and changing Earth systems will benefit society in many profoundly important ways. One of the most direct is related to the Earth’s water cycle relative to fresh water supplies and the frequency of floods and droughts. Those processes have a large impact on the US and global economies.

E3SM-MMF, a project within the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Exascale Computing Project (ECP), is developing a cloud-resolving Earth system, or climate change, model. The work entails resolving the key processes responsible for cloud formation in the Earth’s atmosphere as opposed to the conventional approach, which is to approximate their average behavior.

In a recent interview concerning the journey toward the realization of the capabilities of future exascale supercomputers at DOE facilities, E3SM-MMF principal investigator Mark Taylor of Sandia National Laboratories briefly discussed the importance of global Earth system models, the E3SM-MMF team’s activities, and how capitalizing on the throughput of exascale computing systems will support a wide variety of climate science studies.

Related Links:

E3SM-MMF project page: https://www.exascaleproject.org/project/e3sm-mmf-cloud-resolving-climate-modeling-earths-water-cycle/

E3SM project website: https://e3sm.org

Recent article about E3SM: https://e3sm.org/one-year-after-model-release-developers-envision-a-bigger-better-and-higher-resolution-e3sm/

Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility Outreach at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories contributed to the creation of this content.