The Climateprediction.net programme, big data climate

modelling

Computational challenge of climate science

Citizen science: from climate

change through to extreme weather

attribution

Our laboratory: the world’s largest climate modelling facility

13 years, >25 sub projects, >600,000 volunteers, >130M model-years

Unlimited ensemble size: exploring uncertainties in climate predictions

Results of the BBC Climate Change Experiment:Rowlands et al, Nature Geosci., 2012

Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC)

• Developed at UCB Space Science Laboratory by the SETI@home group• Public-resource rather than grid computing• Goals of BOINC

– Reduce the barriers of entry to public-resource computing– Share resources among autonomous projects– Support diverse applications– Reward participation

• Offers tools for– Creating, starting, stopping and querying projects– Adding new applications, new platforms, …– Creating workunits/tasks – Monitoring server performance

Project ScientistCitizen Scientist

Web server

DB server

Up/downloadserverClimate models

Experiment

Results

Communication

Papers

Volunteer Distributed Computing

Very large ensembles of simulations can be generated by using this framework.

weather@home regional climate models

High impact weather events are typically

rare and unpredictable.

They also involve small scales.

Resolution provided by nested regional model.

Creating work for CPDN/W@H• External collaborators fully supported by CPDN team• Work is sent out in batches

– Allows easier management and attribution of data usage– A batch contains an arbitrary number of workunits– A batch is defined within an XML file containing details on all contained workunits, final data

destination etc

• Application distributed seperatly outside of workunit structure to participating volunteer systems

• An individual work unit is;– Namelist & ancillary files

• Results– Results returned on a predetermined sub-schedule (e.g. Monthly within an 1 year model.– ‘Start dump’ also returned to allow restart from this time point

• Chain together short WU to create longer running model which wouldn’t be possible to run individually.

• New: investigating publishing results using Nature Scientific Data to make unique resources openly available

Models• All models part of Hadley CM3 family (currently)• Climateprediction.net

– HadCM3• Weather@Home

– HadAM3P• Global Atmosphere only model with prescribed SST• Mainly used as driver of regional model but capable of individual

operation– HadRM3P

• Regional Climate Model with flexible user defined region of interest• MOSES1 in W@H1, MOSES2 + TRIFFID in W@H2

Super-ensemble projects linked to atmospheric dynamics

1. Strat-trop coupling to extremes

2. Mid-latitude dynamics (DOCILE)1. Dynamics of extremes

3. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change (HAPPI)

1. Strat-trop coupling to extremes

Caption: NAM signal in reanalysis (Mitchell et al, Jclim. 2013). 1. Similar evolution is seen in

intermediate GCM (O’Callaghan et al, GRL, 2015)

2. Similar evolution in full GCMs (Seviour et al, JGR, 2015)

What sample sizes are needed to study extremes?

• Central theme: To understand how different stratospheric variability leads to extreme events at the surface.

2. Mid-latitude extremes (DOCILE)• Central theme: To increase reliability of

attribution statements by considering more realistic dynamics.

• 2003 case study

(Mitchell et al, ERL, 2016)

2. Mid-latitude extremes (DOCILE)

Wave resonance at mid-latitudes?

Normal: July 1980 Extreme: May 2013

(Huntingford et al, in prep)

Data source: PIK/Stefan Rahmstorf; Illustration: Focus 2013,Nr. 28/13

“Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels…”

3. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change (HAPPI)

3. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change (HAPPI)

(Mitchell et al, NCC, 2016)

If you are keen to get involved;

Websites:www.happimip.orgwww.climateprediction.net

Climateprediction.net/Weather@Home Collaborations

Current status of HAPPI data