<
https://theconversation.com/supercomputers-can-take-months-to-simulate-the-climate-but-my-new-algorithm-can-do-it-ten-times-faster-229041>
"Climate models are some of the most complex pieces of software ever written,
able to simulate a vast number of different parts of the overall system, such
as the atmosphere or ocean. Many have been developed by hundreds of scientists
over decades and are constantly being added to and refined. They can run to
over a million lines of computer code – tens of thousands of printed pages.
Not surprisingly, these models are expensive. The simulations take time,
frequently several months, and the supercomputers on which the models are run
consume a lot of energy. But a new algorithm I have developed promises to make
many of these climate model simulations ten times faster, and could ultimately
be an important tool in the fight against climate change.
One reason climate modelling takes so long is that some of the processes being
simulated are intrinsically slow. The ocean is a good example. It takes a few
thousand years for water to circulate from the surface to the deep ocean and
back (by contrast, the atmosphere has a “mixing time” of weeks).
Ever since the first climate models were developed in the 1970s, scientists
realised this was going to be a problem. To use a model to simulate climate
change, it has to be started from conditions representative of before
industrialisation led to the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
To produce such a stable equilibrium, scientists “spin-up” their model by
essentially letting it run until it stops changing (the system is so complex
that, as in the real world, some fluctuations will always be present).
An initial condition with minimal “drift” is essential to accurately simulate
the effects of human-made factors on the climate. But thanks to the ocean and
other sluggish components this can take several months even on large
supercomputers. No wonder climate scientists have called this bottleneck one of
the “grand challenges” of their field."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
