{"id":1724,"date":"2010-06-07T10:47:02","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T14:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=1724"},"modified":"2010-08-13T06:33:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T10:33:00","slug":"climate-computing-computational-data-and-scientific-scalability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2010\/06\/climate-computing-computational-data-and-scientific-scalability\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Computing: Computational, Data, and Scientific Scalability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Short notice, but an interesting talk tomorrow by Balaji of Princeton University and NOAA\/GFDL. Balaji is head of the Modeling Systems Group at NOAA\/GFDL. The talk is scheduled for 4 p.m., in the Physics building, room MP408.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Climate Computing: Computational, Data, and Scientific Scalability<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Balaji's homepage at GFDL\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gfdl.noaa.gov\/~vb\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">V. Balaji<\/a><br \/>\nPrinceton University<\/p>\n<p>Climate modeling, in particular the tantalizing possibility of making\u00a0projections of climate risks that have predictive skill on timescales\u00a0of many years, is a principal science driver for high-end computing.\u00a0It will stretch the boundaries of computing along various axes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>resolution, where computing costs scale with the 4th power of\u00a0problem size along each dimension<\/li>\n<li>complexity, as new subsystems are added to comprehensive earth\u00a0system models with feedbacks<\/li>\n<li>capacity, as we build ensembles of simulations to sample\u00a0uncertainty, both in our knowledge and representation, and of that\u00a0inherent in the chaotic system. In particular, we are interested in\u00a0characterizing the &#8220;tail&#8221; of the pdf (extreme weather) where a lot of\u00a0climate risk resides.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The challenge probes the limits of current computing in many ways.\u00a0First, there is the problem of computational scalability, where\u00a0the community is adapting to an era where computational power\u00a0increases are dependent on concurrency of computing and no longer on\u00a0raw clock speed. Second, we increasingly depend on experiments\u00a0coordinated across many modeling centres which result in\u00a0petabyte-scale distributed archives. The analysis of results from\u00a0distributed archives poses the problem of data scalability.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, while climate research is still performed by dedicated\u00a0research teams, its potential customers are many: energy policy,\u00a0insurance and re-insurance, and most importantly the study of climate<br \/>\nchange impacts &#8212; on agriculture, migration, international security,\u00a0public health, air quality, water resources, travel and trade &#8212; are\u00a0all domains where climate models are increasingly seen as tools that<br \/>\ncould be routinely applied in various contexts. The results of climate\u00a0research have engendered entire fields of &#8220;downstream&#8221; science as\u00a0societies try to grapple with the consequences of climate change. This\u00a0poses the problem of scientific scalability: how to enable the legions\u00a0of non-climate scientists, vastly outnumbering the climate research\u00a0community, to benefit from climate data.<\/p>\n<p>The talks surveys some aspects of current computational climate\u00a0research as it rises to meet the simultaneous challenges of\u00a0computational, data and scientific scalability.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update: Neil blogged <a title=\"Semantic Werks on Balaji's talk\" href=\"http:\/\/neilernst.net\/2010\/06\/09\/climate-models-and-computing-talk-with-balaji\/\" target=\"_blank\">a summary of Balaji&#8217;s talk<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short notice, but an interesting talk tomorrow by Balaji of Princeton University and NOAA\/GFDL. Balaji is head of the Modeling Systems Group at NOAA\/GFDL. The talk is scheduled for 4 p.m., in the Physics building, room MP408. Climate Computing: Computational, Data, and Scientific Scalability V. Balaji Princeton University Climate modeling, in particular the tantalizing possibility [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1727,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions\/1727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}