Conference: Kilometer-scale Atmospheric Model Hack-a-thons

This award supports a workshop on global storm resolving models (GSRMs), models of the global atmosphere with a horizontal grid spacing of a few kilometers that are capable of simulating the unbalance buoyancy force responsible for convective clouds. GSRMs bridge the gap between regional models with horizontal grid spacings of meters to tens of meters which allow detailed simulations of convective clouds but only over limited areas, and global models with grid spacings of tens to hundreds of kilometers that capture the large-scale atmospheric circuation but can only simulate convective clouds in an indirect and aproximate sense.

The ability of GSRMs to capture the full range of atmospheric phenomena from global to continental to jet streams, monsoons, frontal systems and all the way to the scales of organized convection and the intense precipitation generated by it has enormous potential for basic science research. But the promise of GSRMs comes with challenges, in particular the very high computational cost of the simulations and the very large data volumes they generate.

The challenges of GSRMs and the large datasets they produce demand a community approach in which resources are pooled and expertise is shared to maximize the benefits of the resource-intensive simulations.

The workshop funded here, scheduled for May 12-17, is part of the community organizing effort required to support the development and use of GSRMs. The workshop is primarily a hackathon in which participants work in small groups to develop software for accessing and analyzing GSRM output to address particular research questions. The agenda also includes presentations on the best ways to use GSRMs to takle hard problems in weather and climate science.

The workshop is one of several coordinated hackathons taking place simultaneously around the world, with additional sites at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and sites in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Codes produced by the hackathon will be published in a Juypiter Notebook and a report on the hackathon and its outcomes will be submitted for publication to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Funds provided through this award are used primarily to cover travel costs for 16 workshop participants, with priority given to graduate students and early-career scientists.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.