Announcement of opportunity:
Climate Simulation Laboratory is seeking proposals

Climate Simulation Laboratory

D ear Colleague:

The Climate Change Science Program is soliciting proposals for the use of Climate Simulation Laboratory (CSL) computing facilities. The deadline for submitting proposals is 12 July 2004. Applications cannot be submitted or modified after that date. Allocations for accepted proposals will go into effect on 1 September 2004.

The multi-agency CSL computing facility was established in 1995 and is dedicated to climate modeling in support of the Climate Change Science Program. The CSL is separate from NCAR's general-purpose computing facility, and CSL computing resources are allocated through a separate process. If you are currently using the CSL, please submit an updated proposal, as we plan to reallocate the entire CSL capacity.

If you have questions about the solicitation, please contact Ginger Caldwell (cal@ucar.edu, 303-497-1229). Also, please share this information with other colleagues who might be interested. We look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Al Kellie
Director, Scientific Computing Division

Guidelines for proposals to use the Climate Simulation Laboratory

A national computing facility for climate system modeling in support of the Climate Change Science Program

Introduction

NCAR operates a dedicated climate-model computing facility in support of the multi-agency Climate Change Science Program. The Climate Simulation Laboratory (CSL) is administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The computational facilities are housed, operated, and maintained by the Scientific Computing Division (SCD) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), located in Boulder , Colorado. The purpose of the CSL is to provide high-performance computing and data-storage systems to support large-scale, long-running simulations of the earth's climate system (defined as the coupled atmosphere, oceans, land, and cryosphere, and associated biogeochemistry and ecology, on time scales of seasons to centuries), including appropriate model components, that need to be completed in a short calendar period. A large simulation is one that typically requires tens of thousands of processor hours for its completion and usually produces terabytes of model output that must be archived for analysis and intercomparison with other simulations and with observations.

In addition, users of the CSL have access to the NCAR Mass Storage System (MSS)—one of the most capacious and efficient storage systems in the world—and the NCAR Visualization Laboratory. CSL users are also given the full range of the NCAR SCD user support services.

Criteria for use of the CSL

1. The CSL is open to all principal investigators funded or supported by a U.S. university or U.S. federal or U.S. private not-for-profit laboratory (including their international collaborators).
2. Calculations should greatly benefit from special, dedicated supercomputing (e.g., multi-hundred-year runs with coupled climate models and very large ensembles of seasonal to interannual predictability runs with both coupled and components of coupled climate models).
3. Large, collective group efforts, preferably interdisciplinary teams that address broadly posed sets of questions, e.g., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and National Assessment issues will be given preference. Also encouraged are collaborations with scientists involved with the development of policy, including impacts, mitigation, and adaptation options for climate change as well as short-term climate variations.
4. Proposed calculations should be linked explicitly to peer-reviewed research projects or agency/institute reviewed projects (as in the case of some federally sponsored laboratories). In any case, proposals for use of the CSL must include a brief science document (approximately five pages) that will be reviewed by the CSL Allocation Panel (see below) to determine scientific merit.

Allocation process

An allocation panel of experts, which includes the CSL facility director as an ex-officio member, has been established. Panel recommendations for CSL use will be based on the above criteria, plus the following:

• Each award must provide sufficient resources. Subcritical allocations, e.g., in order to accommodate additional users, should be avoided.
• A limited number of awards will be recommended. Efficient use of resources will be a factor. Collaborations between modelers of the earth system and mathematical and computer scientists for the development of the computing methodologies proposed for the CSL are encouraged.
• The plan for evaluating the modeling experiments will be a factor. Teams should propose a balanced modeling program of experimentation, application, analysis, and validation.
• Because the CSL is intended to provide large amounts of computing to a small number of projects, priority will be given to proposals that request large amounts and are positioned to make expeditious use of CSL machines (for example, models that run efficiently on CSL computer resources—currently an IBM POWER4 cluster of 8 or 32 processor nodes—and/or ensembles of concurrent single-processor jobs).

The CSL Allocation Panel will recommend allocation of CSL resources based on its review of the proposals (in the context of all the above criteria and factors), Climate Change Science Program priorities, and available CSL resources. The CSL Allocation Panel will report its recommendations to the CSL facility director, who will forward them to NSF for final allocation decisions. The NSF will evaluate the recommendations in consultation with agency representatives of the Climate Change Science Program.

How to submit a proposal

Proposals must be submitted via the web by 12 July 2004 using the form at http://www.scd.ucar.edu/csl/

Questions may be directed to Ginger Caldwell (cal@ucar.edu, 303-497-1229).