The video illustrates the importance of global high-resolution climate and weather simulations and how ESiWACE makes these simulations possible.
https://mms.dkrz.de/movies/ESiWACE/P3740_DKRZ_small.mp4
The climate is changing, extreme events are becoming more frequent and mankind has to prepare and adapt early to the changes that we are expecting. We need the best and most reliable information on weather extremes and possible future climate changes in order to make informed decisions.
These decisions are based on simulations that are performed with increasingly complex climate and weather prediction models, representing the best physical understanding of the underlying processes. Extremely powerful supercomputers and efficient, optimized models and software are needed in order to explicitly calculate crucial climate-relevant small-scale processes such as cloud formation and the cloud dynamics during heavy precipitation events. In current-generation global climate simulations these aspects need to be approximated by using parametrizations. By directly resolving clouds, we will thus dramatically improve studies of climate sensitivity and future extreme events. This requires global models with a spatial resolution of 1 km, pushing today's supercomputers to the limits of their capacity and performance.
This is where ESiWACE comes into play: The EU-funded Horizon 2020 project "ESiWACE – Centre of Excellence in Simulation of Weather and Climate in Europe“, along with its successor ESiWACE2, merges the European expertise in the fields of both weather and climate modeling and high performance computing (HPC). ESiWACE aims at preparing weather and climate research for the efficient use of future generations of supercomputers (pre-exascale & exascale). ESiWACE supports the entire process of global earth system modeling. It brings together all stakeholders including climate scientists, computing centers and HPC industry. The holistic approach of ESiWACE encompasses the whole simulation process: model optimization, job scheduling, I/O and data management, and the analysis and visualization of extremely large data sets. ESiWACE supports climate research with technical developments as well as user trainings.
The new ESiWACE video illustrates the evolution of computing power and model resolution and points up the significance for our understanding of the climate system and future adaptation strategies as well as for Europe as an HPC location. Both scientists from climate and weather science and experts in the field of high performance computing (HPC) are featured. Moreover, the video contains numerous animated visualizations created at DKRZ, making climate change visible and illustrating the precision at which computations in weather and climate simulations are currently being carried out on Europe’s leading supercomputers.
The full HD version of the video is also available on the Youtube channel of ESiWACE.