M.

Rani

A Global Model Framework

Development of a Global
Quasi-Uniform Modeling
Framework
Miodrag Rani
NCEP/NOAA/SAIC
ESSIC/UMD
Jun 7, 2007

A Global Model Framework

Content
Authors bio-sketches
Research background, objectives and
motivation
Methodology and approach
Some of the results
Potential applications
Future development
Acknowledgements

Jun 7, 2007

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Authors Bio Sketches

Alma mater:
University of Belgrade in Serbia
BS, Master of Science and Ph.D. in
meteorology from the Faculty of Natural and
Mathematical Sciences in Belgrade
Some of best know contributors of this school:
Milutin Milankovic Theory of Climate
Fedor Mesinger (Eta model) and Zavisa Janjic (Eta
and WRF models)

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M. Rani

Employment and Affiliations

University of Belgrade, frmr. Yugoslavia (1979-1989)

CAPS The University of Oklahoma (1989-1992)
NCEP (1992-1997)
Goddard Space Flight Center/UMBC (1997-2006)
NCEP/NOAA (2006-present)
ESSIC/UMD (2007-present)

Research Interest
Numerical modeling
Data assimilation
Atmospheric dynamics
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Teaching record

Numerical Modeling of Atmosphere

Atmospheric Dynamics
Computational Physics
Application of Statistical Methods in Meteorology
Weather and Climate of Yugoslavia

Some of the scientific contributions

Jun 7, 2007

A fourth-order Arakawa type advection scheme

A first non-hydrostatic version of Eta model
Mass conservative semi-Lagrangian schemes
Quasi-uniform spherical grids

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Research background, objectives and motivation

NCEP regional Eta model

Step formulation of the terrain

Arakawa type conservative dynamics
Semi-staggered distribution of variables
Full physics including explicit clouds
Coupled with NOAH surface and subsurface hydrology

Two possible directions for the development in

mid 90s
Nonhydrostatic version for operations beyond 10 km
Global version global integrations

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M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Global version
Why do we need a global version:
Eta model dynamics is ideal for simulation of largescale flow
Why?
Because of a strict enforcement of
Arakawa conserving constraints that
should provide a better statistical
agreement between the simulated
and the real atmosphere
Because the E-grid scheme is able
to properly take care of Coriolis
effect
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Motivation
Successful long-term integrations, such as medium
range weather forecasting (~ weeks), seasonal (~
months) and global climate projections (~ decades) and
coupling with other components of Earth climate system,
have a huge potential for practical applications in many
areas of human activity

Jun 7, 2007

Agriculture
Fishery
Insurance
Tourism
Forestry
....

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Challenging science issues

Better understanding of global warming
Modeling of paleoclimates
Review of historical weather and explanation of
phenomena such as medieval warming and
mini ice age are some of the most challenging
issues
Effects of ocean circulation and phenomena
such as ENSO on weather patterns around the
globe

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M. Rani

Most importantly
There is a feeling that simulation of present
day global climate models cannot fully describe
signals of major climate indices (such as ENSO
or North Atlantic Oscillation), because of the
low resolution noise
Thus, the idea is to build cloud scale climate
models, which could hopefully overcome this
problem
One of the most serious problems in these
arena are related to spherical geometry
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A Global Model Framework

3) Method and approach

Standard longitude-latitude
grid represents a problem in
global modeling

Longitude-latitude grid

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M. Rani

Poles represent a problem

How to maintain conservation of important integral
constraints?
How to apply polar filtering?

Rancic and Nickovic (1988) suggested a

solution to the first problem which was
implemented by Wyman (1996) in a GFDL
version of the Eta model
Yet, the feeling remained that the poles
represent a major nuisance, which came once
again in the focus of attention with appearance
of distributed memory computers

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M. Rani

Polar filtering is a typical example of an

excessive spatial resolution which does not
effectively use computing resources
(c.f., Randal et al. 1997)
First, the areas around poles are over-resolved
wasting memory
Then, the effect of this over-resolution is thrown away
wasting computing time
Additionally, there is a problem of load balancing
meaning that in principle the rest of the processors is
idle while the processors assigned to deal with areas
around poles are computing polar filtering
And finally, polar filtering generally requires global
operators which assume a lot of communications

Jun 7, 2007

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

An alternative solution Quasi-uniform

grids
Gnomonic cube was
introduced by
Sadourny(1972) as a
potential solution to the
problem
The problem that we now
have 8 singular points
and 12 singular lines

Gnomonic Cube

Jun 7, 2007

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Conformal-smoothed cubic grid

Rancic et al. (1996) and
Purser and Rancic (1998)
suggested a solution to
this problem
It consists of numerically
generating conformal
coordinates thus
avoiding breaking of the
coordinate lines
And then in the second
stage smoothing of
coordinates in order to
increase resolution at the
corners
Jun 7, 2007

Conformal Smoothed Cubic

Grid

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Groups that use conformal cubic grid

Climate model at MIT (John Marshal)
An oceanic model at NCEP (Dmitry Chalikov)
Atmospheric model of Australian Weather
Bureau (John McGregor)
An oceanic model at Japanese Earth Simulator
(Motohiko Tsugawa)
An atmospheric model associated with
Japanese Earth Simulator (Sung-Dea Kang )

Jun 7, 2007

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M. Rani

Conformal-smoothed octagonal grid

Conformal-smoothed grid
(Purser and Rancic, 1997)
was introduced with the idea
to remove singular corners
out of extratropical region
where baroclinic instability is
prevailing mechnanism

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M. Rani

Problems and advantages

All these grids use curvilinear coordinate frame
- which means the that fundamental
conservation laws and the general model
structure had to be reformulated in terms of
general curvilinear coordinates
Also, there is now 8 singular points, but these
are now weak singularities on which is possible
to preserve global conservation
In principle, the difference between cubic and
octagonal grids as well as other
generalizations is only in formulation of
communications

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A Global Model Framework

Thus we can use the same model formulation

for all of grid topologies which allow us to
refer to the global framework rather that to a
single global model

Cubic Grid

Jun 7, 2007

Octagonal Grid

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Furthermore
We can actually formulate such a framework in
quite general terms as to provide its future
application for globalization of other regional
models (such as NMM), in which case the
application of the Eta model is just a prototype
for such a development
However, dealing with the Eta alone already
turned out to be challenging and very
demanding, and imposed a whole set of
customizations of model dynamics in order to
achieve optimal performance
Jun 7, 2007

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Rotation of horizontal grid

y

x
h

E-grid
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B-grid

A Global Model Framework

Continuous Equations
u
uu vv
u RT p
f Gv

t
x 2
x
p x
v
uu vv
v RT p
f Gu

t
y 2
y
p y
T
T
T
T 1 RT
u
v

t
y
c p p
x
m
1 muG muG m

t
G x
y

RT

p
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M. Rani

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Here:
(u, v)

- covariant wind components

(u, v )

- contravariant wind components

Jacobian of transformation

p 1
( ps pT )
s

p pT
s

p
T
s

Physics is generally defined in columns and

does not heavily depend on underlying grid
geometry
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M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Curvilinear formalism
u V a1
v V a2

V ua1 va 2

qij ai a j
G a1 a 2

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Det (qij )

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Some results
A long term low resolution run:
The Global Eta model is initialized using NCEP Global
model data
Global Eta model with global step terrain and full
physics is run over 10 days at a very low resolution
of about 250 km
Only 500 hPa surface is presented in run with the
cubic grid

Jun 7, 2007

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Feb 1, 2005

GEF

Feb 1, 2005

Day

Analysis

Feb 2, 2005

Day

Analysis

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Feb 2, 2005

GEF

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Feb 3, 2005

GEF

Feb 3, 2005

Day

Analysis

Day

Analysis

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Feb 4, 2005

GEF

Feb 4, 2005

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Day

10

Analysis

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Feb 11, 2005

GEF

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A Global Model Framework

Tests of computational Efficiency

C43 GEF; Cubic grid with 10586 grid points

O29 GEF; Octagonal grid with 10978 grid points
GFDL FMS 144x72=10368 grid points
tr running time (sec per simulated day)
tf time spend on polar filtering
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A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Comparison with Regional Eta

Regional Eta: 48 km
O135: Octagonal~45 km
C201: Cubic ~45 km

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M. Rani

Potential Applications
Study and simulation of tropical phenomena
(hurricanes, El Nio, etc.) because a cubic
version of this model has some 15% higher
resolution around equator then long-latitude
grid models with the same number of gridpoints
Study and simulations of polar circulation and
phenomena (ozone, stratospheric sudden
warming, interaction with ice, etc.) because
neither cubic nor octagonal version has a
singular polar problem and both provide a
uniform resolution in polar regions
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A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Medium Range Weather Forecasting

Both versions comes with a variable resolution
as an option

Stretched Cubic Grid

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Stretched Octagonal Grid

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Technique of grid stretching

In longer integrations the concept of grid
stretching may replace current paradigm with
two models, regional and global, running
successively, with the regional depending on
global
Grid stretching for cubic/octagonal grid was
introduced and tested by Rancic and Hai
(2005)
The necessary numerical infrastructure,
including domain decomposition, is also
developed
Jun 7, 2007

M. Rani

A Global Model Framework

Grid topologies

Basic Cubic Grid

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Cubic Grid 2

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Framework
Thus, instead of a model operating on a single
hardwired grid, the result here is a flexible
framework consisting of a series of alternative
grids that a user may chose for a particular
application

Jun 7, 2007

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Further development
A new NSF grant was recently awarded to
continue this research
Nonlinear advection scheme (Janjic 1984, as well as 4th
order version of Rancic 1988) of the regional Eta model is
written in a strong conservative rather then in a vector
invariant form

u
1
x
t
h

y
x'
y'
1 x x
x
x
2 x

U x u V y u U ' x 'u V ' y 'u

3

v
1
y
t
h

y
x'
y'
1 y x
y
y
2 y

U x v V y v U ' x 'v V ' y 'v

3

Jun 7, 2007

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Important property of this scheme is to realistically

presents the nonlinear transfer of energy among different
scales
The immediate
consequence is that less
noise is allowed to affect
the long scales and
slowly propagating quasigeostrophic part of the
flow
Indirectly, the effect of
physical forcing is more
properly propagated up
scales
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A Global Model Framework

New grid topologies

Jun 7, 2007

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A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

and a series of other interesting issues:

Inclusion of 6th order conservative
differencing
A new (nu = n alternative vertical
coordinate
Merging with NMM infrastructure
A series of new applications, including
coupling with other components of Earth
system

Jun 7, 2007

A Global Model Framework

M. Rani

Acknowledgements
The work on this project has been sponsored
by an NSF grant (ATM -0113037)
Some of the material shown is prepared Dr.
Hai Zhang, former PhD student at UMBC

Jun 7, 2007