NCAR Climate Simulation Laboratory

An interagency facility addressing important scientific and policy issues relating to global change.

The purpose of the CSL is to expedite completion of simulations that require hundreds, even thousands, of CPU hours.
--Bill Buzbee, Director, NCAR Scientific Computing Division

How Large is Large?

NCAR and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, in collaboration with the National Science Foundation and the High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program, have established the Climate Simulation Laboratory (CSL) at the NCAR Mesa Lab in Boulder, Colorado. The CSL is a special-use computing facility that supports projects of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP) and accelerates progress in climate-modeling research.

The CSL provides dedicated high-performance computing, data storage, and data analysis systems for large, long-running simulations of the earths climate system. A large simulation is one that requires hundreds or thousands of processor hours for its completion, often producing gigabytes of model output to be archived for analysis and comparison with observations and other simulations.

Resources Dedicated to Climate Modeling

Major CSL computing equipment includes a CRAY Y-MP8-864, a 64-processor T3D system, a CRAY J916, and a CRAY EL98. Together, these machines can sustain calculation rates of 23 gigaflops (billion arithmetic operations per second). The Y-MP8, T3D, and J9 are used for large simulations. The EL98 is used for analysis of model output.

Supporting resources include the NCAR Mass Storage System (one of the most capacious and efficient storage systems in the world), the NCAR Visualization Laboratory, extensive data archives, and user support services. The NCAR Scientific Computing Division (SCD), which for many years has provided reliable supercomputing resources and services to the atmospheric sciences and related communities, operates and supports the CSL.

Opportunities for Scientific Collaboration

The CSL is open to all principal investigators supported by a U.S. agency or institution, including their international collaborators. At least once a year, NCAR publishes a call for proposals to use the laboratory. CSL projects benefit from dedicated supercomputing (for example, multiple 100-year runs with coupled climate models). Many project teams are embarking on large, interdisciplinary group efforts, such as the Climate System Model. The CSL provides opportunities for scientific collaborations concerning development of policy, including impacts, mitigation, and options for adaptation.

A panel of experts in climate and/or large, long-running simulations reviews applications for use of CSL resources. Allocations are made based on the panel reviews and evaluations in the context of the published criteria for the CSL, U.S. GCRP priorities, and available resources.

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