Pilot Lab Exascale Earth System Modelling

JSC is leading a new Helmholtz incubator project that aims to lay the foundation for new breakthroughs in earth system modelling (ESM) on future exascale computer architectures. There is increased societal demand for very high-resolution simulations of our environment as well as a better integration of the information value chain, from observations to coupled simulations and impact assessments. Recent technology trends, which lead to more heterogeneous HPC architectures and rapidly growing data volumes, require fundamentally new programming paradigms and call for a coherent strategy for creating next-generation earth system models based on close collaboration between domain scientists and computer experts.

The new project is entitled Pilot Lab Exascale Earth System Modelling (PL-ExaESM) and contains five work packages, each partnering scientists from different research fields and Helmholtz centres. Within these packages, PL-ExaESM will explore new concepts to overcome scalability limits, increase flexibility in ESM workflows, overcome bandwidth limitations, optimize exascale HPC design, and improve ESM components through AI methods. The project will be led by PD Dr. Martin Schultz from the Earth System Data Exploration research group and managed by Dr. Catrin Meyer from the SimLab Climate Science. It will run from October 2019 until September 2021 and will become a Joint Lab ExaESM in the coming Helmholtz PoF IV period.

Contact: Dr. Martin Schultz

from JSC News No. 267, 27 September 2019