Download Modeling the whole Earth System

Bob Bishop
Founder & President, ICES Foundation
Geneva, Switzerland
 40 years of Landsat
 AMS, NPP, Cryosat, GOCE, SMOS, ISS, SDO, Hubble
 robotics, remote-sensing and in-situ sensor networks
 Doppler, lidar, ocean buoys, cabled oceans, wave gliders
Such devices are now generating petabytes each day, and soon
exabytes & zettabytes of real-time, high-res, rich streaming data
Politics
Socioeconomics
Biosphere
Earth
 financial data
 digital medical imaging
 digital government services
 digitized books, libraries, broadcasting
 social networking sites, blogs, smart phones, webcams
- LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Overall, digital source data is increasing faster than Moore’s Law!
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but how to move, store, harmonize and curate it
and then federate it
mine it
and finally assimilate it into our models
Integrative computational models can clarify data sets whose
sheer size would otherwise place them outside of human ken
 modeling & simulation
 data mining & analytics
 high performance computing
 interactive, immersive, 4D visualization
In fact, we don’t really understand a scientific phenomenon until it
can be computationally modeled and visualized!
 help protect the planet
 preserve biodiversity
 keep people safe
 allow society to grow
 keep our society resilient
 improve our global policy making
Above all, insights that help us govern the planet in a
healthy, coherent, balanced, and equitable manner!
 40,000 heat records have been broken in 2012 so far!
 July 2012 hottest month on record - 64% drought
 wildfires , violent storms, derechos
 tornadoes, hurricanes
 Deep Horizon spill
 Katrina
And outside of North America things are even worse!
 The Great East Asian Earthquake & Tsunami of 3/11
 Fukushima nuclear meltdown & contamination
 Banda Aceh quake & tsunami of December 2004
 Bangkok, Pakistan, Queensland floods of 2010~12
 Russian heatwave of 2010, European heatwave 2003
 Chile ash cloud of 2012, Iceland ash cloud 2010
 Italian, Iran, Chile, NZ, Haiti, Szechuan earthquakes
Increasing population density means more ‘black swan’ events!
Future Change in Extreme Summer Drought
Late 20th C to Late 21st C
4X probability of
extreme summer
drought in Great
Plains, Florida,
Yucutan, and
parts of Eurasia
10th Percentile Drought: Number of years out of 47 in a simulation of future climate (2071-2117) for which the June-August
mean rainfall was less than the 5th driest year of 47 in a simulation of current climate (1961-2007).
Dirmeyer et al. 2012
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M9.0 megathrust in an offshore subduction zone
10m tsunami hits coastline 30 minutes later
400,00 homes destroyed – 19,850 fatalities
factory supply chain disrupted worldwide
three nuclear reactors fail at Fukushima
radioactive contamination spreads
Japan turns off 50 of its 52 nuclear reactors
Japan PM resigns, TEPCO nationalized, $200B+ so far
Switzerland, Germany, Italy cancel future nuclear power plans!
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quarterly profit demands drive ‘just in time’ behavior
low reserves & safety margins = ‘brittle’ social fabric
‘optimized complexity’ creates lack of resilience
our organizations become knowledge silos
we are seriously over specialized
Few see the whole picture - precursor signals are hard to detect!
 climate change ~ CO2 ppm ~ global warming
 ocean acidification
 stratospheric ozone
 global P and N cycles
 aerosol loading
 freshwater usage
 land use changes
 biodiversity loss
 chemical pollution
Maybe we have already crossed several critical ‘tipping points’?
4 slides from David Wasdell: Apollo-Gaia Project, UK
 UNEP: the Montreal Protocol of 1987 for CFC control
 IPCC: created 1988 by the WMO and UNEP. AR5 due 2013
 UNDP: Earth Summit (Rio 1982)
Sustainable Development: Rio+20 (2012)
 UNFCCC: Kyoto Protocol (1997), Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban
 UNISDR: Hyogo Framework (2005)
 WCRP-ICSU-IHDP-IGBP: Planet under Pressure (London, 2012)
Agenda: climate change, global warming, adaptation, mitigation,
sea level rise, disaster risk reduction, sustainability, resilience
 hindcasting the recent past climate
 forecasting the future climate for years 2035 and 2100
 quantifying cloud feedback effects and the carbon cycle
But how to take account of social responses and interactions?
 mitigation strategies
 adaptation strategies
 social development pathways & scenarios
- demographics, economies, technologies, policies
- direction of change, response to impacts
Complex analysis of model hierarchies & ensemble averages!
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can any one country afford it?
will our computers ever be fast enough?
will our grid resolution ever be fine enough?
will or coupling algorithms be good enough?
will our scientific & social knowledge ever be deep enough?
On the other hand – isn’t integration what the public expects?
Towards Comprehensive Earth System Models
1975
1970
1985
1992
1997
Atmosphere
Atmosphere
Atmosphere
Atmosphere
Atmosphere
Atmosphere
Land surface
Land surface
Land surface
Land surface
Land surface
Ocean & sea-ice
Ocean & sea-ice
Ocean & sea-ice
Sulphate
aerosol
Sulphate
aerosol
Non-sulphate
aerosol
Sulphate
aerosol
Non-sulphate
aerosol
Carbon cycle
Carbon cycle
Ocean & sea-ice
2000
Atmospheric
chemistry
Strengthening colours
denote improvements
in models
Sulphur
cycle model
Land carbon
cycle model
Ocean carbon
cycle model
Atmospheric
chemistry
Non-sulphate
aerosols
Carbon
cycle model
Atmospheric
chemistry
The Met.Office Hadley Centre
Ocean & sea-ice
Off-line
model
model
development
 Swiss based not-for-profit
 private-public-partnership
 neutral, independent & non-political
 partnering with national climate, geo & space centers
 partnering with university research centers
 partnering with International Orgs & NGOs
 dedicating 25% of resources to developing world
 dedicated to research, discovery and policy guidance
ICES is structured with a Board, Expert & Ethics Committees,
and is privately funded!
 coupled weather~climate (seasonal, annual, decadal, centennl)
 coupled ecosystems, environment & biosphere models
 coupled mantle, volcanic & tectonic plate models
 coupled Earth’s magnetosphere & core dynamics
 coupled solar wind and other planetary sciences
 extension of natural sciences to socioeconomics:
- resource depletion, sustainability, resilience
- transport, emissions, pollution
- energy, water, food, health
- geoengineering
Open science, open publishing, open data files, open source code!
 grids, clouds, clusters, supercomputing
 the power wall, the memory wall, IMDGs
 CPUGPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, accelerators
 variable precision, bit-reproducible, bit-deviant
 application profile, scalability, hardware resilience
 application specific co-design of hardware/software
 neuromorphic
 probabilistic multi-exaflop visual Earth-System simulator
We desire to put the scientist ‘in the loop’ and make
the system visually 4D, interactive and immersive!
 Cascadian Resilience Center
 Southern California
 Great rivers
 The Alps
 Arctic
 Antactic
Open Partners:
Visual partner:
ICES in the press:
Climate Code, Zettascience
Metanoiaa~Infinitas
‘The CERN for Climate’
‘The CERN for Sustainability’