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Tier 4 — Narrative / commentaryPeer-reviewed

Kilometer-Scale Climate Models: Prospects and Challenges

Christoph Schär, Oliver Fuhrer, Andrea Arteaga, Nikolina Ban, Christophe Charpilloz, Salvatore Di Girolamo, Laureline Hentgen, Torsten Hoefler, Xavier Lapillonne, David Leutwyler, Katherine Osterried, Davide Panosetti, Stefan Rüdisühli, Linda Schlemmer, T. C. Schulthess, Michael Sprenger, Stefano Ubbiali, Heini Wernli

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2019

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Summary

This paper reviews progress toward kilometre-scale climate modelling using both global and regional approaches, with particular emphasis on GPU-based computational implementation. The authors demonstrate that explicit treatment of moist convection at this resolution promises substantial improvements to water cycle and extreme weather simulation. A central practical contribution is the proposal that online analysis and bit-reproducible simulation approaches offer more viable solutions than conventional data archival for managing the exponential growth in output volumes inherent to high-resolution climate research.

UK applicability

The computational and methodological advances presented are applicable to UK climate research infrastructure, particularly for improving extreme weather and precipitation forecasting relevant to British agricultural resilience planning. The data management strategies proposed may inform UK climate modelling centres' approaches to handling high-resolution simulation outputs.

Key measures

Model horizontal resolution (kilometre scale), computational efficiency on GPU hardware, data output volumes, simulation reproducibility across hardware architectures, representation of moist convection and extreme weather phenomena

Outcomes reported

The study demonstrated GPU-based implementation of regional climate models at kilometre-scale resolution and evaluated data management strategies for high-resolution climate simulations. It assessed the capacity to conduct multiweek global and decadal continental-scale climate simulations with explicit convection treatment rather than parameterisation.

Theme
Climate & resilience
Subject
Climate & greenhouse gas mitigation
Study type
Narrative Review
Study design
Narrative review with technical demonstration and prototype development
Source type
Peer-reviewed study
Status
Published
Geography
Europe
System type
Other
DOI
10.1175/bams-d-18-0167.1
Catalogue ID
SNmokylrbn-b4nysw

Topic tags

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