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Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) ModelE

Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) ModelE

Research at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) emphasizes global change, an interdisciplinary research activity addressing natural and man-made changes in our environment which occur on various time scales from decades to millennia and which affect the habitability of our planet. The research combines analysis of comprehensive global datasets with global models of atmospheric, land surface, and oceanic processes and includes study of past events on Earth such as paleoclimate change and the study of other planets as an aid to prediction of future evolution of Earth on a planetary scale. The latest incarnation of the GISS series of coupled atmosphere-ocean models is called ModelE.

SSSO is collaborating with the developers of ModelE to improve and extend the model in a variety of ways. SSSO implemented the initial domain-decomposition strategy within ModelE, which has enabled significant performance improvement on modern clusters through parallelization. More recently, SSSO has assisted with the introduction of a new dynamical core, which among other things, extends the scalability of the model even further. Currently SSSO is collaborating with GISS scientists to eliminate several remaining performance bottlenecks in the model in preparation for AR5 runs. SSSO is also working with GISS scientists to reduce software complexity and improve software quality with the goal of enhancing developer productivity and reducing long-term maintenance costs for the model.