Presentation
The ICON-A Model for Direct QBO Simulations on GPUs
Presenter
DescriptionClassical numerical models for the global atmosphere, as used for numerical weather forecasting or climate research, have been developed for conventional central processing unit (CPU) architectures. This hinders the employment of such models on current top-performing supercomputers, which achieve their computing power with hybrid architectures, mostly using graphics processing units (GPUs). Thus also scientific applications of such models are restricted to the lesser computer power of CPUs. Here we present the development and application of a GPU-enabled version of the ICON atmosphere model (ICON-A), motivated by a research project on the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), a global-scale wind oscillation in the equatorial stratosphere that depends on a broad spectrum of atmospheric waves, which originates from tropical deep convection. Resolving the relevant scales, from a few kilometers to the size of the globe, is a formidable computational problem, which can only be realized now on top-performing supercomputers. Here we briefly present the computational benefit from being able to use GPUs instead of CPUs, followed by results from QBO experiments, which show that the central driving process of the QBO, the wave meanflow – interaction, is indeed simulated and causes a downward propagation of the QBO jets.
TimeWednesday, June 2811:30 - 12:00 CEST
LocationDischma
SessionMS5A - Technical Challenges and Opportunities for Digital Twins of the Earth System (Part 2/3)
Session Chair
Event Type
Minisymposium
Climate, Weather and Earth Sciences