Global Climate and Policy Simulation in a Peta-scale Computational Environment

David Erickson
Seminar

Several new climate, carbon and biogeochemical modeling results that require multi-Tera/Peta flop computational resources will be discussed within the context of climate science and high performance computing. A new fully coupled Earth system model, in both the biogeochemical and physical sense, that specifically tracks CO2 and dimethyl sulfide exchange between the ocean, land and atmosphere systems will be described. As an example of the utility of next generation Earth system models, a series of specific biogeochemical processes and feedbacks in the climate system are examined. These new climate simulations incorporate chemical and biological systems in addition to the more classical physically based numerical models.

A multi-variate clustering algorithm to assess terrestrial ecosystem niche evolution in a warming greenhouse world will be presented. Essentially, the spatial distribution of concurrent changes in temperature, precipitation, radiation and soil moisture drive ecosystem niche evolution in complex and interactive ways. Using climate prediction simulations for 1870-2100, ecosystem niche evolution at mid-high latitudes will be presented

Consistent with the theme of fully coupled, comprehensive Earth system model creation, a highly detailed numerical model of energy usage is grafted to a GCM. This energy use and resource allocation model is driven with GCM simulated climate variables from 2000-2025 so as to predict the financial impacts and feedbacks of global warming.

Dr. David Erickson has been a Senior Research Staff member in the Computational Earth Sciences Group of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee since 2000. He is
also an Adjunct Professor in the Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Dr. Erickson's research interests include global and regional climate modeling, numerical modeling of the carbon cycle and atmospheric chemistry, and modeling the global air-sea exchange of energy, momentum, trace gases and particles. He has recently started coupling detailed energy/policy models with global climate models. He has
served on several international and national advisory committees, including the panels of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council, the United Nations
Environment Programme Panel on the Environmental Effects of Ozone Depletion and served on the Editorial Board of Chemosphere: Global Change Science. He is also on the
Scientific Planning Team of the Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS). Dr. Erickson has 70+ refereed journal publications, 125+ abstracts, book chapters and symposia proceedings and has given over 225 lectures in 27 countries.