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The Aeras Next Generation Global Atmosphere Model

Bosler, Peter A.; Bova, S.W.; Demeshko, Irina P.; Fike, Jeffrey A.; Guba, Oksana G.; Overfelt, James R.; Roesler, Erika L.; Salinger, Andrew G.; Smith, Thomas M.; Kalashnikova, Irina; Watkins, Jerry E.

The Next Generation Global Atmosphere Model LDRD project developed a suite of atmosphere models: a shallow water model, an x - z hydrostatic model, and a 3D hydrostatic model, by using Albany, a finite element code. Albany provides access to a large suite of leading-edge Sandia high- performance computing technologies enabled by Trilinos, Dakota, and Sierra. The next-generation capabilities most relevant to a global atmosphere model are performance portability and embedded uncertainty quantification (UQ). Performance portability is the capability for a single code base to run efficiently on diverse set of advanced computing architectures, such as multi-core threading or GPUs. Embedded UQ refers to simulation algorithms that have been modified to aid in the quantifying of uncertainties. In our case, this means running multiple samples for an ensemble concurrently, and reaping certain performance benefits. We demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches here as a prelude to introducing them into ACME.