COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: CONTINUOUS DYNAMIC GRID ADAPTATION IN A GLOBAL ATMOSPHERIC MODEL: APPLICATION AND REFINEMENT

This project had goals of advancing the performance capabilities of the numerical general circulation model EULAG and using it to produce a fully operational atmospheric global climate model (AGCM) that can employ either static or dynamic grid stretching for targeted phenomena. The resulting AGCM combined EULAG's advanced dynamics core with the "physics" of the NCAR Community Atmospheric Model (CAM). Effort discussed below shows how we improved model performance and tested both EULAG and the coupled CAM-EULAG in several ways to demonstrate the grid stretching and ability to simulate very well a wide range of scales, that is, multi-scale capability. We leveraged our effort through interaction with an international EULAG community that has collectively developed new features and applications of EULAG, which we exploited for our own work summarized here. Overall, the work contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed publications and over 70 conference/workshop/seminar presentations, many of them invited. 3a. EULAG Advances EULAG is a non-hydrostatic, parallel computational model for all-scale geophysical flows. EULAG's name derives from its two computational options: EULerian (flux form) or semi-LAGrangian (advective form). The model combines nonoscillatory forward-in-time (NFT) numerical algorithms with a robust elliptic Krylov solver. A signature feature of EULAG is that it is formulated in generalized time-dependent curvilinear coordinates. In particular, this enables grid adaptivity. In total, these features give EULAG novel advantages over many existing dynamical cores. For EULAG itself, numerical advances included refining boundary conditions and filters for optimizing model performance in polar regions. We also added flexibility to the model's underlying formulation, allowing it to work with the pseudo-compressible equation set of Durran in addition to EULAG's standard anelastic formulation. Work in collaboration with others also extended the demonstrated range of validity of soundproof models, showing that they are more broadly applicable than some had previously thought. Substantial testing of EULAG included application and extension of the Jablonowski-Williamson baroclinic wave test - an archetype of planetary weather - and further analysis of multi-scale interactions arising from collapse of temperature fronts in both the baroclinic wave test and simulations of the Held-Suarez idealized climate. These analyses revealed properties of atmospheric gravity waves not seen in previous work and further demonstrated the ability of EULAG to simulate realistic behavior over several orders of magnitude of length scales. Additional collaborative work enhanced capability for modeling atmospheric flows with adaptive moving meshes and demonstrated the ability of EULAG to move into petascale computing. 3b. CAM-EULAG Advances We have developed CAM-EULAG in collaboration with former project postdoc, now University of Cape Town Assistant Professor, Babatunde Abiodun. Initial study documented good model performance in aqua-planet simulations. In particular, we showed that the grid adaptivity (stretching) implemented in CAM-EULAG allows higher resolution in selected regions without causing anomalous behavior such as spurious wave reflection. We then used the stretched-grid version to analyze simulated extreme precipitation events in West Africa, comparing the precipitation and event environment with observed behavior. The model simulates fairly well the spatial scale and the interannual and intraseasonal variability of the extreme events, although its extreme precipitation intensity is weaker than observed. In addition, both observations and the simulations show possible forcing of extreme events by African easterly waves. 3c. Other Contributions Through our collaborations, we have made contributions to a wide range of outcomes. For research focused on terrestrial behavior, these have included (1) upwind schemes for gas dynamics, (2) a nonlinear perspective on the dynamics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, (3) numerical realism of thermal convection, (4) extreme precipitation processes, (5) unstructured meshes, (6) porous-media analogies for simulating flow in urban environments, (7) Monge-Ampere enhancements of semi-Lagrangian methods and (8) further extensions of the generality of EULAG applications to geophysical problems. The generality of EULAG for multi-scale flow was also demonstrated through solar applications. Simulations of solar magnetohydrodynamics showed that EULAG produces the solar cycle fairly well. Although the model's solar cycle is significantly longer than observed, it shows remarkable agreement with observations in features of spatial evolution. These efforts in environments that are extreme from a geophysical perspective have helped to establish the robustness of EULAG as an all-scale code for geophysical applications