Latest Supercomputers Enable High-Resolution Climate Models, Truer Simulation of Extreme Weather
Berkeley Lab researcher says climate science is entering a new golden age.
Not long ago, it would have taken several years to run a high-resolution simulation on a global climate model. But using some of the most powerful supercomputers now available, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) climate scientist Michael Wehner was able to complete a run in just three months.
What he found was that not only were the simulations much closer to actual observations, but the high-resolution models were far better at reproducing intense storms, such as hurricanes and cyclones. The study, “The effect of horizontal resolution on simulation quality in the Community Atmospheric Model, CAM5.1,” has been published online in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.
“I’ve been calling this a golden age for high-resolution climate modeling because these supercomputers are enabling us to do gee-whiz science in a way we haven’t been able to do before,” said Wehner, who was also a lead author for the recent Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “These kinds of calculations have gone from basically intractable to heroic to now doable.”
Using version 5.1 of the Community Atmospheric Model, developed by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for use by the scientific community, Wehner and his co-authors conducted an analysis for the period 1979 to 2005 at three spatial resolutions: 25 km, 100 km, and 200 km. They then compared those results to each other and to observations.
One simulation generated 100 terabytes of data, or 100,000 gigabytes. The computing was performed at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. “I’ve literally waited my entire career to be able to do these simulations,” Wehner said.
The higher resolution was particularly helpful in mountainous areas since the models take an average of the altitude in the grid (25 square km for high resolution, 200 square km for low resolution). With more accurate representation of mountainous terrain, the higher resolution model is better able to simulate snow and rain in those regions.
“High resolution gives us the ability to look at intense weather, like hurricanes,” said Kevin Reed, a researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a co-author on the paper. “It also gives us the ability to look at things locally at a lot higher fidelity. Simulations are much more realistic at any given place, especially if that place has a lot of topography.”
The high-resolution model produced stronger storms and more of them, which was closer to the actual observations for most seasons. “In the low-resolution models, hurricanes were far too infrequent,” Wehner said.
The IPCC chapter on long-term climate change projections that Wehner was a lead author on concluded that a warming world will cause some areas to be drier and others to see more rainfall, snow, and storms. Extremely heavy precipitation was projected to become even more extreme in a warmer world. “I have no doubt that is true,” Wehner said. “However, knowing it will increase is one thing, but having a confident statement about how much and where as a function of location requires the models do a better job of replicating observations than they have.”
Wehner says the high-resolution models will help scientists to better understand how climate change will affect extreme storms. His next project is to run the model for a future-case scenario. Further down the line, Wehner says scientists will be running climate models with 1 km resolution. To do that, they will have to have a better understanding of how clouds behave.
“A cloud system-resolved model can reduce one of the greatest uncertainties in climate models, by improving the way we treat clouds,” Wehner said. “That will be a paradigm shift in climate modeling. We’re at a shift now, but that is the next one coming.”
The paper’s other co-authors include Fuyu Li, Prabhat, and William Collins of Berkeley Lab; and Julio Bacmeister, Cheng-Ta Chen, Christopher Paciorek, Peter Gleckler, Kenneth Sperber, Andrew Gettelman, and Christiane Jablonowski from other institutions. The research was supported by the Biological and Environmental Division of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
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– See more at: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/11/12/latest-supercomputers-enable-high-resolution-climate-models-truer-simulation-of-extreme-weather/#sthash.HIQAHanC.dpuf
Just a last-ditch effort to legitimize the previous claims. Now we can put garbage in and get higher resolution garbage out, faster than ever before!
Still reminds me of “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN”…
Wow. They can generate ever more accurate garbage faster than ever. The computer power is truly amazing. That does not mean they will get any better results, of course, but it will likely increase their insistence that we can trust the projections, which likely will show even more extreme weather. Eager to see what it spits out. If it incorporates oceans as well as clouds, it could be very interesting.
From my view it looks like the results are predetermined. Higher tech gives just higher authority to the hypnotized masses.
New model, same assumptions.
and more accurate results
“Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” (Lorenz 2005)
Whoever wrote that press release seems to have a rather vague idea of mathematics:
“Wehner and his co-authors conducted an analysis for the period 1979 to 2005 at three spatial resolutions: 25 km, 100 km, and 200 km”.
“The higher resolution was particularly helpful in mountainous areas since the models take an average of the altitude in the grid (25 square km for high resolution, 200 square km for low resolution).”
I make that 625 and 40,000 square km respectively. Unless resolution was actually 5 and 14 kilometers,
By the way 5 kilometers is probably a more realistic spatial resolution if you actually want to model weather reasonably realistically in mountain areas.
He kept saying the models were improved and more accurate, but never quantified that. For all we know they improved from laughable to pathetic.
This so called ‘Golden Age’ of turd polishing is still producing a lot of ‘Brown 25’*.
*® Uranus Corp. from “The Groove Tube”
Hooray. Our models don’t suck as badly as they used to.
We are entering the Golden Age of electronic chicken entrails. This could be fun.
The Met Office keeps on getting bigger and faster computers and keeps failing faster. Why?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2014/new-hpc
I wish they will do an interactive Web version!
This is better than current video games, by far.
A little bit more expensive to develop, I gather. ;-(
Latest Supercomputers Enable …. faster garbage in/garbage out.
End of story.
Their models still suck because they are stilled based on the same fallacious assumptions and use the same tampered data sets.
Hello, if these super computers are so good, how come the three day forcast is frequently wrong.
For a real and being able to check the accurancy of their forecasts, why not take a known set of data, try 1880, then 1920, then 1950, and see what comes up. Easy to check on how good they are. And mind you no cheating, slipping in the known weather data before the programme has been run.
Michael Elliott
Seems that the low-res models are more like REALITY.
Very true.
But if you are right for the wrong reason you are just setting yourself up for a bigger fall.
To me it paraphrases as: “My new computer is more fun because it makes things look even scarier when I assume that CO2 drives temperature.”
So lets see their output. Pick a start date of oh 2000 and lets see if it can hindcast the 1990s and forecast out to 2010. When they actually start to get close to Dr Easterbrook’s or Dr Libby’s level of skill we’ll call that a good thing.
If they start a run in 2000 does it show the “pause, peak, plateau? If not then back to reworking the code boys.
It might not be a problem with the code, but more a problem with capturing the physics. As stated, a lot of cloud dynamics are missing.
“golden age of climate science, models”
This one leaves me with “Everything’s Up To Date In Kansas City” playing in my head.
Seems naive (or possibly, arrogant) to assume that no further improvements will be made and perfection has already been attained What I see as essential to the warmist dogma is the assumption that future generations will have only the present technology and understanding to solve whatever problems vex mankind. They apparently feel an urgency to predict something which is beyond our understanding at this juncture and control it’s outcome as if somehow the future won’t take care of itself.
A modern dynamical computer model should be developed. This is where you can increase the resolution in areas for example with large terrain differences.
What an oxymoron statement. It should say better at NOT reproducing intense storms, as there has been a decrease.
Because there is no input data for most of the world, they have to estimate/guess/fudge most of the data. It doesn’t matter how “super” your computer is, garbage in is garbage out.
This reminds me of when classical physicists were getting closer to matching reality in the quantum arena as they added parameters, but still using classical physics. Yet they were wrong at the same time they fooled themselves into believing they were on the right track.
Hmm…The Golden Age of Physics, maybe?
No doubt these new computerized Ouija boards will produce the same predictions: “We’re gonna need more money”
The following quote is relevant here:
… there is an awful temptation to squeeze the lemon until it is dry and to present a picture of the future which through its very precision and verisimilitude carries conviction. Yet a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking it is a true one, is like to be worse off than someone with no map at all; for he will fail to inquire whenever he can, to observe every detail on his way, and to search continuously with all his senses and all his intelligence for indications of where he should go.
From Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher.
Looks like they’ve moved from infancy to the toddler stage. As long as people recognize they are far from having anything close to reality I guess making progress is a good thing.
Also note the time period is during the warm phase of the PDO. Since they don’t model ENSO at all, any warming they find will over state reality.
“To do that, they will have to have a better understanding of how clouds behave.”
Ah, yes… Ye ol’ cloud defense…
This feigned ignorance of how clouds are the real climate regulators of Earth’s climate (not CO2) will literally be CAGW advocates’ get-out-of-jail-free card, when they’re testifying before Congress trying to defend why world governments wasted $10’s of trillions on the disconfirmed CAGW hypothesis…
Willis’ brilliant post awhile back regarding his ONE LINE equation that matches HADCRUT4 temp records to an amazing R2 value of .98, shows you don’t need millions of lines of computer code and years of supercomputer time to “accurately” hindcast anything… All you need is a ONE LINE equation that matches known results based on arbitrary assumptions…
As long as these CAGW climate models assume ECS will be anywhere near 3.0C~4.5C, model projections will be laughably off, unless natural forcing effects or natural variation just happen to generate 3~4.5C of warming by 2100, which doesn’t seem probable…
Maybe the reason that NWS was down.
Chinese hack U.S. weather systems, satellite network.
Hackers from China breached the federal weather network recently, forcing cybersecurity teams to seal off data vital to disaster planning, aviation, shipping and scores of other crucial uses, officials said. The intrusion occurred in late September but officials gave no indication that they had a problem until Oct. 20, said three people familiar with the hack and the subsequent reaction by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service. Even then, NOAA did not say its systems were compromised.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/chinese-hack-us-weather-systems-satellite-network/2014/11/12/bef1206a-68e9-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html
GIGO still rules I see. I’ll stick with my Farmer’s Almanac and the bunion aching weather test
for a while yet, thank you.
It’s just a cheap imitation of the real thing:
Note the daily precipitation cycle evident over heavily forested tropical regions.
That isn’t simulated in the computer game.
Its not that we cant do pretty good weather approximations, we can. Our weather forecasting on the whole is pretty good. The problem is that they think that a pretty good weather approximation has anything whatsoever to do with modelling changes due to CO2 increases. We cant model climate change. Its not the same as weather and no amount of resolution increase will change that.
Steven Mosher November 13, 2014 at 1:58 pm
Nope. That’s the output of a model, which can have any resolution you like … but which is assuredly different from the observational data which the commenter asked about.
w.
Willis, your Callender thread does not appear to be open for comments.
Judging by your closing remark, I’m guessing this is an unintended SNAFU.
It’s not just me then. Great article BTW.
Noticed that too. Very good article.
Thanks for the heads-up, guys. It’s fixed now, your comments welcome.
w.