The Unknown The Unknown And The Unexpected:And The Unexpected:Climate Change And Climate Change And The Pacific NorthwestThe Pacific Northwest

Mark R. AbbottCollege of Oceanic and Atmospheric SciencesOregon State University

OverviewOverview

Global scale climate

Modeling and climate

Climate and the Northwest

New ways to approach the unknowable

Historical Records of CO2Historical Records of CO2

CO2 And TemperatureCO2 And Temperature

20,000 years ago 2200? ( + 5 meters)

Past And Future Rise In Sea Past And Future Rise In Sea Level Level

Timeline Of Climate Timeline Of Climate Model DevelopmentModel Development

Figure courtesy W. Washington, NCAR

Impacts Of Spatial Resolution On The Impacts Of Spatial Resolution On The Types Of Terrain That Are Included In Types Of Terrain That Are Included In ModelsModels

Figure courtesy S. Hostetler, USGS/OSU

What Was Predicted For Last What Was Predicted For Last Winter?Winter?

What Actually Happened?What Actually Happened?

An Impact Of Climate An Impact Of Climate Change?Change?

Climate Climate Change Change Impacts Impacts Depend On Depend On VariabilityVariabilityVariability may

have more human impact than mean stateExamples

European heat wave

Niger drought

Figure courtesy A. Mix, OSU

The Five “Currencies” The Five “Currencies” Of The Earth SystemOf The Earth System

Energy

Water

Carbon

Money

Information

Next-generation Earth system models must account for all of these currencies

Innovation In Earth System Innovation In Earth System Models The “Old” WayModels The “Old” Way

Increased temporal and spatial resolutionData assimilation and near real-time observatories and sensor networksIncreasing coupling of components and increasing richness of modelsImpact on HPC requirements has been a focus on increased capacities for computation as well as on post-production analysesCan the community obtain the HPC resources it needs in a rapidly-changing market?

New Demands On Climate New Demands On Climate ModelsModels

Not just increased resolution and more physicsRisk assessments and scenarios

Impacts of climate change on human migration patterns

Rare but high impact scenarios

Feedbacks between climate and socioeconomic processes

Past as a poor predictor of the futureNeed to create diverse and resilient knowledge networks to develop and test scenariosAdaptive management rather than rigid protocols

System ArchitecturesSystem Architectures

The Intel and AMD ApproachGeneral purpose systems for a wide array of applications

6 month technology cycle

Science community started rolling their own clusters because of lower costs

CPU CPU

MPI

Increasingly Complex Increasingly Complex ArchitecturesArchitectures

Intel and AMD stalled at 3 GHz because of packaging issues (i.e., heat dissipation)

Now going multi-core at lower frequency

Increasingly complex programming modelLow efficiencies because fundamental models require lots of shared memory (and hence message passing)

Focus on communications infrastructureHard to take generalized commodity systems and support innovationNew architectures (CPU/GPU) now entering the fray

Core 1Core 2Core 3Core 4

Core 1Core 2Core 3Core 4

MPI

OpenMPOpenMP

Is This Innovation?Is This Innovation?

Community modelsGood for production runs and post-production analyses

Good for education

Not so good for adding new components and new physics and biogeochemistry

Supercomputer centersGood for production runs of very large models

Not especially efficient for exploration of new models and new approaches

New architectures make it increasingly difficult to code

We need more than a big data center with VT 100 terminals

Shifting The Context For ITShifting The Context For IT

Transforming our workflowsReal-time, continuous, adaptive

Shifting the balance of data and knowledgeCollaborative, networked, interdisciplinary

Not just bigger and fasterA collection of adaptable, dynamic services

Increased customization in a commodity world

HPC-enabled components live everywhere, not just data centersEnd-to-end, user experience is critical

Not just in the office or lab

A New Approach?A New Approach?

Overcoming language and cultural barriers to enable collaborationMerging data streams and sensorsDeveloping and testing models

Seeking out underlying and emergent rules to make projections and predictions

This looks more like a network gaming metaphorNew capabilities include

Preservation, provenance, collaboration, accountability, and reputation

Shifting The CommunityShifting The Community

From data delivery to knowledge servicesThe Wikipedia model for smart mobs

Networks of potential resources

Innovation will come from the fringes

More “democracy” in the systemWhat used to be expensive and complex is now available to everyone

Need for standard, open frameworksSimple and extensible

Not driven solely by science requirements

But still require enormous amount of work

ConvergencesConvergences

New IT capabilities will bring more integration among diverse communities, data sets, and models

New demands for climate models and climate services will require these capabilities

Need a resilient approach to the complexities and uncertainties of the future

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Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2007