A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution

Nils P. Wedi; Inna Polichtchouk; Peter Dueben; Valentine G. Anantharaj; Peter Bauer; Souhail Boussetta; Philip Browne; Willem Deconinck; Wayne Gaudin; Ioan Hadade; Sam Hatfield; Olivier Iffrig; Philippe Lopez; Pedro Maciel; Andreas Mueller; Sami Saarinen; Irina Sandu; Tiago Quintino; Frederic Vitart

doi:10.1029/2020MS002192

A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution

Nils P. Wedi, Inna Polichtchouk, Peter Dueben, Valentine G. Anantharaj, Peter Bauer, Souhail Boussetta, Philip Browne, Willem Deconinck, Wayne Gaudin, Ioan Hadade, Sam Hatfield, Olivier Iffrig, Philippe Lopez, Pedro Maciel, Andreas Mueller, Sami Saarinen, Irina Sandu, Tiago Quintino, Frederic Vitart

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Abstract

In an attempt to advance the understanding of the Earth's weather and climate by representing deep convection explicitly, we present a global, four-month simulation (November 2018 to February 2019) with ECMWF's hydrostatic Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) at an average grid spacing of 1.4 km. The impact of explicitly simulating deep convection on the atmospheric circulation and its variability is assessed by comparing the 1.4 km simulation to the equivalent well-tested and calibrated global simulations at 9 km grid spacing with and without parametrized deep convection. The explicit simulation of deep convection at 1.4 km results in a realistic large-scale circulation, better representation of convective storm activity, and stronger convective gravity wave activity when compared to the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection. Comparison of the 1.4 km simulation to the 9 km simulation without parametrized deep convection shows that switching off deep convection parametrization at a too coarse resolution (i.e., 9 km) generates too strong convective gravity waves. Based on the limited statistics available, improvements to the Madden-Julian Oscillation or tropical precipitation are not observed at 1.4 km, suggesting that other Earth system model components and/or their interaction are important for an accurate representation of these processes and may well need adjusting at deep convection resolving resolutions. Overall, the good agreement of the 1.4 km simulation with the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection is remarkable, despite one of the most fundamental parametrizations being turned off at 1.4 km resolution and despite no adjustments being made to the remaining parametrizations.

Original language	English
Article number	e2020MS002192
Journal	Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems
Volume	12
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002192
State	Published - Nov 2020

Funding

This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported under Contract DE‐AC05‐00OR22725. Access to the simulation output can be requested by contacting OLCF Help Desk via email to [email protected] and referring to Project CLI900. This paper benefited from the close collaboration between high‐resolution simulation model benchmarking and advanced methodologies presently being developed for heterogeneous high‐performance computing platforms at ECMWF in the ESCAPE‐2 (No. 800897), MAESTRO (No. 801101), EuroEXA (No. 754337), and ESiWACE‐2 (No. 823988) projects funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 future and emerging technologies and the research and innovation programmes. The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments, which have significantly improved this manuscript. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Access to the simulation output can be requested by contacting OLCF Help Desk via email to [email protected] and referring to Project CLI900. This paper benefited from the close collaboration between high-resolution simulation model benchmarking and advanced methodologies presently being developed for heterogeneous high-performance computing platforms at ECMWF in the ESCAPE-2 (No. 800897), MAESTRO (No. 801101), EuroEXA (No. 754337), and ESiWACE-2 (No. 823988) projects funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 future and emerging technologies and the research and innovation programmes. The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments, which have significantly improved this manuscript.

Funders	Funder number
ECMWF
EuroEXA	ESiWACE‐2, 823988, 754337
MAESTRO	801101
Office of Science	800897, DE‐AC05‐00OR22725, CLI900
European Commission
Horizon 2020

Keywords

MJO
atmosphere
explicitly simulated convection
high performance computing
stratosphere
winter season

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10.1029/2020MS002192

Cite this

Wedi, N. P., Polichtchouk, I., Dueben, P., Anantharaj, V. G., Bauer, P., Boussetta, S., Browne, P., Deconinck, W., Gaudin, W., Hadade, I., Hatfield, S., Iffrig, O., Lopez, P., Maciel, P., Mueller, A., Saarinen, S., Sandu, I., Quintino, T., & Vitart, F. (2020). A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 12(11), Article e2020MS002192. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002192

@article{bb043e632dac4cc28a8267008e9659fa,

title = "A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution",

abstract = "In an attempt to advance the understanding of the Earth's weather and climate by representing deep convection explicitly, we present a global, four-month simulation (November 2018 to February 2019) with ECMWF's hydrostatic Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) at an average grid spacing of 1.4 km. The impact of explicitly simulating deep convection on the atmospheric circulation and its variability is assessed by comparing the 1.4 km simulation to the equivalent well-tested and calibrated global simulations at 9 km grid spacing with and without parametrized deep convection. The explicit simulation of deep convection at 1.4 km results in a realistic large-scale circulation, better representation of convective storm activity, and stronger convective gravity wave activity when compared to the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection. Comparison of the 1.4 km simulation to the 9 km simulation without parametrized deep convection shows that switching off deep convection parametrization at a too coarse resolution (i.e., 9 km) generates too strong convective gravity waves. Based on the limited statistics available, improvements to the Madden-Julian Oscillation or tropical precipitation are not observed at 1.4 km, suggesting that other Earth system model components and/or their interaction are important for an accurate representation of these processes and may well need adjusting at deep convection resolving resolutions. Overall, the good agreement of the 1.4 km simulation with the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection is remarkable, despite one of the most fundamental parametrizations being turned off at 1.4 km resolution and despite no adjustments being made to the remaining parametrizations.",

keywords = "MJO, atmosphere, explicitly simulated convection, high performance computing, stratosphere, winter season",

author = "Wedi, {Nils P.} and Inna Polichtchouk and Peter Dueben and Anantharaj, {Valentine G.} and Peter Bauer and Souhail Boussetta and Philip Browne and Willem Deconinck and Wayne Gaudin and Ioan Hadade and Sam Hatfield and Olivier Iffrig and Philippe Lopez and Pedro Maciel and Andreas Mueller and Sami Saarinen and Irina Sandu and Tiago Quintino and Frederic Vitart",

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month = nov,

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Wedi, NP, Polichtchouk, I, Dueben, P, Anantharaj, VG, Bauer, P, Boussetta, S, Browne, P, Deconinck, W, Gaudin, W, Hadade, I, Hatfield, S, Iffrig, O, Lopez, P, Maciel, P, Mueller, A, Saarinen, S, Sandu, I, Quintino, T & Vitart, F 2020, 'A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution', Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, vol. 12, no. 11, e2020MS002192. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002192

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AU - Wedi, Nils P.

AU - Polichtchouk, Inna

AU - Dueben, Peter

AU - Anantharaj, Valentine G.

AU - Bauer, Peter

AU - Boussetta, Souhail

AU - Browne, Philip

AU - Deconinck, Willem

AU - Gaudin, Wayne

AU - Hadade, Ioan

AU - Hatfield, Sam

AU - Iffrig, Olivier

AU - Lopez, Philippe

AU - Maciel, Pedro

AU - Mueller, Andreas

AU - Saarinen, Sami

AU - Sandu, Irina

AU - Quintino, Tiago

AU - Vitart, Frederic

PY - 2020/11

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N2 - In an attempt to advance the understanding of the Earth's weather and climate by representing deep convection explicitly, we present a global, four-month simulation (November 2018 to February 2019) with ECMWF's hydrostatic Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) at an average grid spacing of 1.4 km. The impact of explicitly simulating deep convection on the atmospheric circulation and its variability is assessed by comparing the 1.4 km simulation to the equivalent well-tested and calibrated global simulations at 9 km grid spacing with and without parametrized deep convection. The explicit simulation of deep convection at 1.4 km results in a realistic large-scale circulation, better representation of convective storm activity, and stronger convective gravity wave activity when compared to the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection. Comparison of the 1.4 km simulation to the 9 km simulation without parametrized deep convection shows that switching off deep convection parametrization at a too coarse resolution (i.e., 9 km) generates too strong convective gravity waves. Based on the limited statistics available, improvements to the Madden-Julian Oscillation or tropical precipitation are not observed at 1.4 km, suggesting that other Earth system model components and/or their interaction are important for an accurate representation of these processes and may well need adjusting at deep convection resolving resolutions. Overall, the good agreement of the 1.4 km simulation with the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection is remarkable, despite one of the most fundamental parametrizations being turned off at 1.4 km resolution and despite no adjustments being made to the remaining parametrizations.

AB - In an attempt to advance the understanding of the Earth's weather and climate by representing deep convection explicitly, we present a global, four-month simulation (November 2018 to February 2019) with ECMWF's hydrostatic Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) at an average grid spacing of 1.4 km. The impact of explicitly simulating deep convection on the atmospheric circulation and its variability is assessed by comparing the 1.4 km simulation to the equivalent well-tested and calibrated global simulations at 9 km grid spacing with and without parametrized deep convection. The explicit simulation of deep convection at 1.4 km results in a realistic large-scale circulation, better representation of convective storm activity, and stronger convective gravity wave activity when compared to the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection. Comparison of the 1.4 km simulation to the 9 km simulation without parametrized deep convection shows that switching off deep convection parametrization at a too coarse resolution (i.e., 9 km) generates too strong convective gravity waves. Based on the limited statistics available, improvements to the Madden-Julian Oscillation or tropical precipitation are not observed at 1.4 km, suggesting that other Earth system model components and/or their interaction are important for an accurate representation of these processes and may well need adjusting at deep convection resolving resolutions. Overall, the good agreement of the 1.4 km simulation with the 9 km simulation with parametrized deep convection is remarkable, despite one of the most fundamental parametrizations being turned off at 1.4 km resolution and despite no adjustments being made to the remaining parametrizations.

KW - MJO

KW - atmosphere

KW - explicitly simulated convection

KW - high performance computing

KW - stratosphere

KW - winter season

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JF - Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

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M1 - e2020MS002192

ER -

A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

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VisMetHack2022: Visualizing winds and surface variables from the ECMWF IFS 1-km nature run

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A Baseline for Global Weather and Climate Simulations at 1 km Resolution

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Datasets

VisMetHack2022: Visualizing winds and surface variables from the ECMWF IFS 1-km nature run

Cite this