Climate Simulation Lab (CSL)

The Climate Simulation Laboratory at NCAR is a dedicated climate model computing facility supporting the multiagency Climate Change Science Program. 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, including appropriate model components, that need to be completed in a short calendar period. CSL allocations are made approximately every 18 months.

For the CSL, the earth's climate system is defined as the coupled atmosphere, oceans, land, and cryosphere, and associated biogeochemistry and ecology, studied on time scales of seasons to centuries. The CSL's long-running simulations typically require thousands of processor hours for completion and usually produce many gigabytes of model output that must be archived for analysis and intercomparison with other simulations and with observations.

CSL users have access to supercomputers, the Mass Storage System (MSS), and the NCAR Visualization Lab. CSL operates on much of the same equipment as the Community Computing Facility. CSL users are also given the full range of SCD support and consulting services.