Earth Science

Climate scientists are striving to discover exactly how human behavior is changing the earth’s climate and the steps we need to take now to secure the environment for our children’s children. To meet this challenge, they must be able to predict the behavior of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted from cars, factories, and other sources to the earth’s forests, oceans, and atmosphere. Armed with this knowledge, researchers will be a step closer to anticipating our changing climate and telling us what regions are likely to be wetter or drier, hotter or colder.

The task requires leadership computing. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, researchers use the world’s most powerful computer to advance the boundaries of the international Community Climate System Model to simulate the behavior of the world’s oceans and atmosphere, and to model abrupt climate change. Their results will help us understand what we need to do to keep the earth a nurturing and hospitable place.

Earth Science Projects

Washington

Climate-Science Computational Development Team: The Climate End Station II

Principal Investigator: Warren Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Jaguar: 56,000,000 hours

The Climate Science Computational End Station (CCES) will predict future climates using scenarios of anthropogenic emissions and other changes resulting …

Jordan

CyberShake3.0: Physics-based Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis

Principal Investigator: Thomas Jordan, University of Southern California
Jaguar: 38,000,000 hours

Recent destructive earthquakes including Haiti (2010), Chile (2010), New Zealand
(2011), and Japan (2011) highlight the national and international need for …

Lichtner

Ultrascale Simulation of Basin-Scale CO2 Sequestration in Deep Geologic Formations and Radionuclide Migration Using PFLOTRAN

Principal Investigator: Peter Lichtner, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Jaguar: 19,000,000 hours

This project brings petascale computing resources to bear on current environmental problems involving global warming and sequestration of green house …