SciDAC: Earth System Model Development

The Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) of the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for Earth System Modeling (ESM) projects as part of the SciDAC (Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing) program with DOE?s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). The SciDAC program fosters integration of high performance computing and computational science throughout all mission areas within SC. This opportunity addresses collaborative research to enhance climate model resolution, physical representation of processes, validation, and quantification of uncertainty. All projects should be relevant to the objectives of the Earth System Modeling program (http://www.science.doe.gov/ober/CESD/esm.html) within BER?s Climate and Environmental Sciences Division (CESD). The relevant temporal scales of interest to the program range from decades to centu ries. In order to advance the simulation and predictive capabilities of state-of-science climate models, new approaches are needed to increase the spatial resolution, develop and incorporate refinements to physical process representation, and enhance quantification of uncertainty and model validation. National investments in computer science and petascale computing in recent decades have enabled DOE science to be at the forefront of many areas of the physical sciences. DOE?s SciDAC program (http://www.science.doe.gov/ascr/Research/SciDAC.html) is intended to couple these investments in computer science and leadership class computing with scientists from across the major program offices within DOE?s Office of Science. This FOA is to facilitate direct collaboration between computational scientists and climate model developers to enable breakthroughs in climate model simulation and prediction. The BER ESM program aims to advance all aspects of climate science that leads to improved predictability of the earth climate for higher resolution and with reduced uncertainty. The first goal is to improve the accuracy and skill of climate models by implementing enhanced ESM components, such as improved parameterizations for clouds, aerosols and chemistry, carbon cycle modeling, land surface processes, and sea and land ice representation. Development of these model components are expected to be accompanied by comparison with scale-appropriate measurements. A second goal is to understand the principle causes and effects of climate change, including potential abrupt changes in climate. Further information on the ESM program priorities within CESD may be found at: http://www.sc.doe.gov/ober/Climate%20Strategic%20Plan.pdf. High risk, high pay-off research ideas that explore innovative new directions to advance the understanding, simulation and prediction of climate change are encouraged. Applications should clearly describe how the proposed ideas have the potential to lead to breakthroughs in earth system modeling. Availability of advanced computer resources at DOE facilities provides unique opportunities to enhance earth system model component development. CESD will continue to support climate models based on definitive theoretical foundations and improved computational methods that run efficiently on current petascale and future high performance supercomputers.