A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling (2012) / Chapter Skim
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13 Strategies for Optimizing U.S. Institutional Arrangements
13 Strategies for Optimizing U.S. Institutional Arrangements
Pages 223-238
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From page 223... ...
CURRENT GLOBAL CLIMATE MODELING ACTIVITIES IN THE UNITED STATES There are several core global climate modeling efforts within the United States, complemented by scientists at a variety of other institutions. For this discussion, a "core modeling effort" is an activity that meets most or all of the following criteria: • builds complete climate models for use on seasonal to centennial time scales, and includes state-of-the-art representations of the ocean-atmosphere-land ice system, as well as carbon and biogeochemical cycling; • develops models with spatial resolution and scientific capabilities that are consistent with state-of-the-art models used internationally; and • has efforts that are not continually divergent, but that periodically bring together model branches into a central core for ongoing coordinated development.
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From page 224... ...
GFDL and NCAR were designated as the two primary U.S. climate modeling centers in the 2003 report of the U.S.
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From page 225... ...
There is a separation of modeling activities across time scales, with operational weather and seasonal prediction centers largely separated from longer-term climate variability and change efforts. CURRENT REGIONAL MODELING ACTIVITIES IN THE UNITED STATES Regional climate modeling activities are focused on developing and using climate models with fine spatial resolution to better resolve small-scale climate features over a limited geographic domain.
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From page 226... ...
As mentioned above, activities like the CPTs, which are funded by NSF and NOAA, seek to leverage the talents in both universities and national laboratories to make progress on major uncertainties in climate models. The existence of multiple climate modeling centers in the United States has led to a healthy diversity of activity and the benefits of competing approaches.
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From page 227... ...
Increased model complexity and greater societal expectation and demand for climate information create pressure for expanded climate modeling capacity, while human resources within individual modeling groups have not expanded commensurately (Chapter 7)
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Finding 13.4: Some limitations of the current institutional structure are that most U.S. climate modeling centers are individually subcritical with respect to expertise and funding, it is difficult to attract talented young scientists into model development, and the separation of operational and research modeling efforts can be a barrier to advances.
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From page 229... ...
The proposed National Climate Modeling Forums would provide regular interactions between scientists from the various U.S. regional and global modeling activities, including operational modeling.
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From page 230... ...
The Forum would be a particularly appropriate venue for discussing and planning more systematic comparisons and evaluations of regional climate models using standardized metrics, and for model development projects (e.g., scale-aware parameterizations) that try to bridge between the scales of regional and global models.
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From page 231... ...
This thread could lead to the Forum being a nexus for modelers to interact with the National Climate Assessment, depending on how that evolves. Common Software Infrastructure Chapter 10 advocated that a national computing and data infrastructure be a major component of a national strategy for climate modeling; here we discuss some of its institutional benefits and challenges.
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From page 232... ...
It is important that this infrastructure should entrain major regional modeling efforts as well as global climate modeling centers, and be adaptable to both research-oriented and operational modeling, to facilitate cross-fertilization between these model types and their developer and user communities. Computational Capabilities for Climate Modeling As described in Chapter 10, in order to meet the climate data and information needs of decision makers and users, U.S.
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From page 233... ...
Storage and usability of large model data sets will also be key considerations. As discussed below, the committee recommends a two-pronged approach that involves the continued use and upgrading of dedicated computing resources at the existing modeling centers, complemented by an intensive research program on efficient implementation of high-resolution climate models on architectures requiring extreme concurrency (as also called out in Recommendation 10.2)
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From page 234... ...
The design challenge is complicated by the diverse landscape of possible architectures, but the basic issue is architecture independent -- achieving much higher concurrency in climate model codes than is now realizable through code refactoring, compiler tools, new algorithms, etc. This investment leverages off the proposed national software infrastructure, which would facilitate the transfer of software tools and methodologies developed using one model across to other climate models, allowing the community as a whole to navigate hardware transitions more nimbly.
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From page 235... ...
Given the current pressures on human resources for model development, on making model output useful to a broad applications community, and on maintaining an adequate climate observing system, a consensus community-based process would be needed for weighing large additional investments in computing against further investments in these other key links of the climate modeling enterprise. An NCCF must complement institutionally specific computational resources, not replace them.
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From page 236... ...
It might also be vulnerable to year-to-year budgetary instability. An NCCF would have to make choices about computer architecture that might place additional risks on the climate modeling community, associated with "pioneering" the use of untested computer architecture, programming environments, and performance optimization.
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From page 237... ...
They attempt to overcome the obstacles associated with a distributed system through frequent communication at U.S. modeling forums and the adoption of a common software infrastructure to support interlinked model development, execution, and analysis.
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From page 238... ...
Recommendation 13.1: To promote communication and collaboration across the climate modeling enterprise, annual U.S. climate modeling forums should be organized to bring together scientists from the global and regional modeling efforts across the United States, scientists from other institutions that are involved in model development and analysis, and model users.
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