UK-Japan Collaboration:
Coupled Climate-Chemistry-Ecosystem Modelling
with the Earth Simulator
Outline proposal to DEFRA and NERC for funding for a 3-year programme of model development and climate research
David Griggs (Hadley Centre) and Julia Slingo (NCAS/CGAM)
To exploit this unique opportunity to use the Earth Simulator in collaboration with Japanese colleagues, we propose a 3-year project requiring a total of approximately £0.7M additional funding for the NERC component.
This collaboration will provide NERC and DEFRA with a set of climate change projections of considerable use to climate change researchers, to UK Government policy makers, and to those assessing the impacts of climate change and developing regional adaptation and mitigation strategies. These projections will be at an unparalleled spatial resolution, will include an unprecedented representation of the various components earth system, and will be world-leading.
It needs to be stressed that this is an exceptional opportunity to work with the Earth Simulator which will allow us to advance our scientific and technical capabilities in comprehensive, coupled climate modelling and prediction at a critical point in their development. It in no way represents a longer-term solution for supercomputing for climate research in the UK.
1. Introduction
Following the visit of Lord Sainsbury to Japan in April 2001, the Hadley Centre and NCAS/CGAM have established collaborations with scientists in Japan, which have provided access to the Earth Simulator. Through a joint project with the Centre for Climate Science Research (CCSR) at the University of Tokyo and through a wider Agreement with the Director of the Earth Simulator Centre, an ambitious programme of model integrations and climate research is being planned. Initial visits have been completed during which the Hadley Centre atmosphere-only and coupled models have been successfully ported to the Earth Simulator and some high-resolution test integrations have been performed. Whilst confirming the enormous potential for advancing earth system modelling and prediction offered by the Earth Simulator, these visits have also identified the technical difficulties of working with the system and accessing the model data, noting that the Earth Simulator is isolated from the network.
The joint project with CCSR is focused on the production and intercomparison of control and climate change scenarios (First UK Japan Intercomparison: FUJI), in preparation for the IPCC 4th Assessment Report (FAR). This lies at the core of the Hadley Centre’s programme, while CGAM will bring its expertise on understanding and predicting climate variability in the context of a changing climate. The FUJI project is funded by MEXT (Japanese equivalent of NERC) and includes some funds to support visits (short and potentially extended) by UK scientists to Japan, but only limited time on the Earth Simulator.
In addition to the FUJI project, CGAM and the Hadley Centre have signed a formal Agreement with the Earth Simulator Centre, JAMSTEC, which provides access to the Earth Simulator for the next 5 years (see Annex 1) and has the potential to provide a major collaboration between the UK and Japan, with significant access to the Earth Simulator. As Director General of the Earth Simulator (ES), Dr. Sato has a discretionary allocation of 25-30% of the ES for groundbreaking, earth system science through international collaborations established under these Agreements. There was strong encouragement from Dr. Sato for pursuance of an Agreement between the UK and the ES Centre, particularly in the area of high resolution, comprehensive, global environment modelling, not necessarily restricted to the requirements of the IPCC FAR. Under the terms of the Agreement the specific research activities will be decided by discussion between the UK and Japan groups. In its initial phase, it is intended that work under this Agreement would proceed in parallel with the FUJI project.
CGAM and Hadley Centre scientists visited the ES in February and May, and successfully ported several configurations of the Hadley Centre model, undertook some limited timing tests and performed some high-resolution demonstration integrations. We now have sufficient experience with the machine to assess the opportunities and difficulties of working with the Earth Simulator.
The collaboration with the UK on earth system modelling is viewed as a priority by Dr. Sato, and in May, Dr. Keiko Takahashi from the Earth Simulator Centre visited the Hadley Centre and CGAM to establish the basis of the joint project. Following her visit, a draft proposal (see Annex 2) was submitted to Dr Sato and received positively. The next step is to develop a detailed project proposal with specific science objectives, milestones and time schedule. However, this cannot be done until the level of support for the collaboration from NERC and DEFRA is ascertained. This proposal is for funds to set in place the basic staffing levels and associated costs required by the Hadley Centre and NCAS/CGAM to exploit properly the opportunities offered by the Earth Simulator.
2. Proposed Staffing Structure
The proposed project is very ambitious and will stretch both the technical and scientific limits of UK expertise in coupled climate modelling. The collaboration will need to be carefully managed to ensure that the model development is in line with the Hadley Centre’s programme and NERC’s plans, including the UK-HiGEM project. Furthermore, the effective use of the computing time available at the Earth Simulator will require careful planning of model integrations and diagnostics to ensure their maximum utility to the research programmes of the Hadley Centre and NERC. For these reasons, project managers at both the Hadley Centre and NCAS/CGAM are proposed. They will represent the specific interests of the relevant programmes and, in the case of NCAS/CGAM, provide linkages with the wider NERC community. The project managers will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the collaboration and will report to the Directors of the Hadley Centre and CGAM on a regular basis. They will be based at the Hadley Centre and CGAM, where they will work closely with core staff, but will also spend significant periods of time at the Earth Simulator Centre liasing with their Japanese counterparts.
The working environment at the ES is not optimal because of security issues. Model integrations cannot be submitted to the ES and monitored remotely and it is clear that to use the ES effectively will require NERC and Hadley Centre staff to be stationed full-time in Yokohama. Our assessment of the technical and scientific aspects of the proposed collaboration indicates that, annually, 4 person years of effort will be required (i.e. 2 person years each from DEFRA and NERC). These staff will be responsible for porting and optimising the model code in collaboration with computer specialists at the Earth Simulator Centre. Updates to the model will need to be carefully monitored and documented, ensuring that they comply with the coding standards set by the Hadley Centre and the Earth Simulator Centre. These staff will also be responsible for setting up and running model integrations, archiving the model output and providing appropriate diagnostics to scientists in the Hadley Centre and NERC. They will report to the Hadley Centre and NERC project managers. These staff will also undertake their own research within the remit of the joint project, working closely with scientists at the Earth Simulator Centre and the Frontiers Research Programme on Global Change (FRSGC). Since one of the aims of the UK-Japan programme is to work together on areas of climate research that are of mutual interest, staff located at the ESC will be key players in fostering the active collaboration between UK and Japanese researchers. In addition to the staff at ESC, a well-found programme of visits by Hadley Centre and NERC staff to work on specific projects will be required. It is possible that some of these visits could be funded through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office UK-Japan Programme, which aims to promote collaboration.
The integrations performed on the Earth Simulator will represent a major resource for Hadley Centre and NERC scientists for studying regional aspects of coupled climate variability and change at unprecedented resolutions. However, efficient access to the huge datasets generated by the ES will present a major challenge to the programme. Discussions are already taking place between the groups about the bandwidths and speeds required and it is hoped that many of the current problems with retrieving data from the ES will be overcome in the coming months. The BADC has agreed to act as the main archive facility for the ES data since it is already setting in place similar structures for UK-HiGEM and the recently awarded LINK contract from DEFRA. Part-time funding of a data scientist at the BADC will be required to support this activity as well as the maintenance of the data information pages in collaboration with NCAS/CGAM and Hadley Centre.
Overall responsibility for the ES project will lie with the Directors of the Hadley Centre and NCAS/CGAM who will work together to define the direction of the programme in consultation with Dr. Sato. The Project Board will include representatives from DEFRA, NERC, and Japan, and will act to monitor progress and provide recommendations for future funding levels.