LONG-TERM GOALS

We are developing a high-performance broadband radiation code for the current generation of computational architectures. This code, called RRTMGP, will be a completely restructured and modern version of the accurate RRTMG radiation code (Mlawer et al., 1997; Iacono et al., 2008) that has been implemented in many General Circulation Models (GCMs) including the Navy Global Environmental Model (NAVGEM), the NCAR Community Earth System Model (CESM), and NOAA’s Global Forecast System (GFS). Our proposed development will significantly lessen a key bottleneck in these highly complex and coupled models, namely the large fraction of computational time currently required for the calculation of radiative fluxes and heating rates. OBJECTIVES The radiation calculations needed for climate simulations require many independent and complicated calculations, and are therefore an inviting target for new computing architectures such as Many-Integrated-Cores (MICs) and Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). We are developing RRTMGP (‘P’ stands for ‘parallel’), a modern version of the radiation code (RRTMG) used by many climate models, directed at the current generation of vector- and cache-based computational architectures. This code will retain the high accuracy of RRTMG, but is being developed from scratch to make it more flexibl