Research team wins major European computing award for global climate modelling
Release Date 07 November 2011
A significant step forward has been taken in the study of current and future climate with the award of a new grant that allows a team led by the University of Reading to use one of the world's most powerful computers.
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) Access Committee has granted substantial computing resources to a Joint Weather & Climate Research Programme (JWCRP) team of researchers.
The team comprises climate scientists at the Met Office and at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) Climate, and is led by Pier Luigi Vidale, Willis Professor of Climate System Science and Climate Hazards at the University of Reading's Meteorology department and Director of the Weather and Climate Hazards Laboratory.
Professor Vidale's team will use the HERMIT (a TIER-0 machine) supercomputer in Stuttgart, Germany, to conduct a series of 25-year simulations under both current climate conditions and a climate change scenario. Out of the 53 project applications submitted to PRACE, only 24 have been awarded a share of the available 610 million core-hours. The JWCRP team has been awarded 144 million core-hours computing time, the largest amount assigned to one team.
Professor Vidale said: "With our current level of resources on national TIER-1 machines, this experiment would take 33 years to complete. Access to HERMIT is a true quantum-leap for UK climate science. We are grateful to PRACE for the continued international recognition of our team's world-leading capability in climate modelling."
PRACE is an association of 21 member countries creating a pan-European research infrastructure for large-scale scientific and engineering applications at the highest performance level.
ENDS