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Simulation Helps Unlock the Ocean's Secrets
Climate scientists are using the NCCS's Cray XT4 Jaguar supercomputer to illuminate the ocean's role in regulating climate.
The job is enormous. The earth is enveloped by 319 million cubic miles of ocean, which covers nearly three-quarters of the planet to an average depth of more than 12,000 feet. Ocean currents help determine which regions will be frigid and which will be temperate, which will be jungle and which will be desert. The ocean holds vast amounts of heat, as well as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and it plays a pivotal role in the earth's climate on timescales from years to millennia.
Nevertheless, our understanding of how the ocean plays its part is limited at best. A team led by Synte Peacock of the University of Chicago is using Jaguar's massive power to run the most fine-grained, global-scale simulations ever of how the oceans work. In doing so, the team will not only provide new knowledge of the currents and processes at work in the oceans, but also details about the possible long-term fate of gases-especially the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide-and chemicals released into the ocean.
"We don't yet really understand the role of the ocean in regulating climate," Peacock explained. "For example, only about half of the carbon dioxide that has been emitted over the last 100 years or so currently resides in the atmosphere. The rest is in the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere. But the absolute amount stored in the ocean, and how it is distributed, is still being debated."
The team is performing the first-ever 100-year simulation of the ocean at a fine enough scale to include the relatively small, circular currents known as eddies. Eddies play a key role in the dynamics of the ocean, but until recently researchers lacked the computing power to directly simulate eddies on a global scale.
The team's ocean model will eventually be incorporated into a fully eddy-resolving version of the Community Climate System Model, a global climate model being developed primarily by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. According to Peacock, this will be the first time that a coupled climate model will include an ocean able to resolve eddies. The information it provides will be extremely valuable for climate scientists and policy makers alike because a reliable ocean model is critical to a reliable climate model. By helping us understand how the ocean handles the massive amounts of heat and greenhouse gases it contains, Peacock's team will aid us in becoming more knowledgeable and responsible guardians of the planet.