[Beowulf] For grins...India

Vincent Diepeveen diep at xs4all.nl
Wed Dec 10 15:01:23 PST 2008


What is most interesting from supercomputer viewpoint seen is the  
comments i
got from some scientists when speaking about climate calculations.

At a presentation at SARA at 11 september 2008 with some bobo's there  
(minister bla bla),
there was a few sheets from the North-Atlantic.

It was done in rectangles from 40x40KM.

The real question raised by the other scientists who weren't there at  
the presentation is:
"why such an ugly resolution the commercial software we use is far  
superior to this and
capable of calculating more".

So my question basically here to the climatologists here would be:  
"what does it take to
accurately calculate the effects of "global warming" and the fact  
that the ocean will react,
triggering according to some predictions a new iceage.

It should be really possible to do a lot of calculations there also  
presenting what errors there
can be in the calculations to hold true.

Especially the resolutions at which things got calculated so far in  
climate change area, most scientists
who are more busy with airwings (some others of those North Atlantic  
Software Association type guys
post also in this group), influence of moon and so on, onto all kind  
of models.

They do not really understand why all this hasn't been calculated  
before very well.

Maybe the format used to calculate is too generic and therefore not  
storing enough information?
Would GPU's help speeding up calculations here?

So far most models were to say polite, total laymen models. A good  
guess from a scientist so far always
has been better than any calculation.

You realize that this meter rise calculation, i checked out that  
source code myself back in 2003 which ran on
Earth machine and SARA's 1024 processor Origin3800.

I wasn't impressed to read that their conclusion was the rise would  
be 1 meter and in some sort of file that i would
call now bugfix.log there was the comments: "oops we fixed a bug, the  
meter was initialized a meter too high".
I could be wrong of course reading that, as it might be it was just  
the first half million CPU node hours that got wasted...

Is the software too generic to be accurate?
How low level has it been optimized?

Not seldom if some low level programmers go busy with such software  
it suddenly speeds up factor 1000.

Vincent

On Dec 10, 2008, at 10:39 PM, Nifty Tom Mitchell wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 08:37:54AM -0500, Robert G. Brown wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Dec 2008, Dan.Kidger at quadrics.com wrote:
>>
>>> And I am sure Iceland would find it much easier to do the machine  
>>> room
>>> cooling than say Spain or the Southern USA
>>
> .....
>>
>> In the meantime, the advent of the overdue ice age will...
> ----
>
> And in many of the 'global warming' reserch groups are those that are
> looking at 'anoxic' ocean regons in the ocean as bad side effects of
> global warming.  In a geologic perspective it is exactly the  
> environment
> that sequestered so much carbon as coal.  These regions and processes
> may be critical in keeping the lid on CO2 in the atmosphere.
>
> As for the north polar cap it would be interesting to model the  
> warm water
> flow of the Japan Current as it encounters the Bering Strait.  Only  
> 53 Miles
> wide the warm water flow change into the artic with less than a  
> meter rise
> in the sea level would be large (%age) and have a butterfly effect  
> on the artic.
> On the converse, a probject to place a meter+ thick gravel flow  
> barrier would
> be an engineering project akin to a railroad ballast 53 miles long  
> (easy).
> With GPS locators dredge/ fill/ rock could be placed with precision  
> to this end and PERHAPS
> reverse the shrinking of the artic ice sheet and increase the  
> albedo of
> the earth and perhaps restoring the status quo in this regard.
>
> OK grosly simplified but there are not many environmental pinch points
> with as much global leverage.
>
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuroshio
>
> Others are thinking about this.  But are they able to modeling it?
>
>   http://psc.apl.washington.edu/HLD/Bstrait/bstrait.html
>
>
> -- 
> 	T o m  M i t c h e l l
> 	Found me a new hat, now what?
>
> PS: the critical point that the Bering Strait might play here was
> first expressed to me by Ed McCullough then dean of Geology at the  
> University
> of Arizona c. 1969.
>
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