From the Program Manager, May ’22: Progressing Towards Phase III

  • May 24, 2022
  • Feature Story,Home Page Feature
  • Xujing Davis

    Xujing Davis, ESMD Program Manager, DOE BER

    At DOE, almost all EESSD program managers have been busy with reviewing or preparing for review panels for pre-applications and applications from multiple FOAs released since last fall. For this cycle, in addition to regular FOAs such as the Modeling and SciDAC FOAs, we also have the Urban Integrated Field Laboratories and Research Development and Partnership Pilot (RDPP) FOAs. I am inspired by the stimulating research ideas we have received and we are working with the experts in the field for the review process. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the reviewers/panelists for their time, thoughts, and scientific insight, which are key to our evaluations and recommendations.

     

    Progressing toward Phase III

    While producing new science, the E3SM team is progressing toward Phase III. One of the recent key activities is the review and revision of the code review process. It is expected that the newly established code review policy and procedure will facilitate the incorporation of new features into the E3SM code-base and avoid the unexpected surprises that the project encountered in Phase II.  E3SM team members and ESMD-supported model development project PIs should familiarize themselves with this new code review process so that the new developments can be tested early on to be ready for possible integration into E3SM. Another important activity is a series of E3SM Hackathons the team has started to foster collaborations, address some neglected yet high-priority issues, and train new developers.

    Three new code releases provide the team with advanced tools including 1) the netCDF Operators (NCO) that added lossy compression that can double (or more) the compression rate;  2) the Compass (Configuration Of Model for Prediction Across Scales Setups), planned as the primary tool for creating E3SM ocean and land-ice initial conditions for E3SM v3 and beyond, whose newly released v1.0.0 provides an automated system for creating E3SM initial conditions and performing testing of E3SM’s ocean and land-ice components; and 3) the PACE (Performance Analytics for Computational Experiments) v4.0.0 that includes additional I/O performance metrics and backend improvements enabling future maintainability. An interesting fact is that we have surpassed a noteworthy milestone of archiving 100,000 E3SM experiments in PACE!

     

    E3SM science and new capabilities

    A recent study using E3SM and observation data supported the hypothesis that COVID-19 emissions reductions contributed to the 60-year record high summer precipitation that occurred over eastern China in 2020, revealing an important role of aerosols in modifying regional weather conditions and extreme events. Results from very-high-resolution simulations (0.25-1 m resolution) suggested that major revision to existing melt parameterizations is needed to count for the complex boundary layer structure and its effects on ice-shelf melting in typical, coarse-resolution ocean models (~10 km resolution). A group of researchers from multiple projects across EESM examined more than 500 studies about the urban impact on weather and climate and synthesized current understanding to inform future work.

    New capabilities have been produced by the E3SM and its ecosystem projects. The ICoM-ESMD team developed HexWatershed model, the world’s first and only watershed delineation model based on the hexagonal mesh, paving the way for fully couped land-river-ocean Earth system model simulations under a unified mesh framework. Global soil erosion and sediment flux model for Earth system modeling was developed, providing skillful simulations of soil erosion and sediment flux to produce credible predictions of land and river sediment dynamics in response to climate change and human disturbances. MOSART, the river transport model of E3SM, was enhanced to include a new multi-process river sediment module, filling an important knowledge gap by enabling future E3SM representations of suspended sediment and the associated carbon and nutrient fluxes.  

    In addition, E3SM continues integrating advanced technologies and approaches such as ML/AI work to accelerate model development.  

     

    Interagency and international activities

    In March, a few DOE lab scientists including E3SM members were invited to the 2022 US CLIVAR Summit to work with CLIVAR science community representatives to identify opportunities and develop strategies to advance US CLIVAR goals. E3SM’s chief scientist Ruby Leung was invited to present a view on the “Ultra-high resolution modeling” in a virtual workshop on “The Future of Climate Modelling” organized by the WCRP’s new Core Project Earth System Modelling and Observations (ESMO). In April, the Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services (ICAMS) held its 1st ICAMS Wildland Fire Workshop to present current activities supported by different agencies (NSF, DOE, NASA, USGS, NOAA, USFS) and identify opportunities for inter-agency collaboration that would benefit from future investments. The 2nd ICAMS Wildland Fire Workshop would be held in June.  

     

    Upcoming Events

    I look forward to the U.S. Climate Modeling Summit meeting in August, this year E3SM project has the honor to host this important event in a hybrid (in-person and virtual) format.

    The E3SM Leadership Team should hold time for the planned Phase III proposal review during Oct 17-20 2022 11am-5:00pm ET.

    Two weeks later, during Oct 31- Nov 3rd, 2022, there will be a joint, virtual EESM PI meeting, more details will be shared when they are available.

    Over the next few months, there will be new award recommendations coming, and E3SM ecosystem projects work will be evolving to align and adjust to the start of the E3SM Phase III. I look forward to working with existing and new team members toward and into phase III!

     

    Thanks for the team’s great work, hope you enjoy the beautiful summer season while staying safe and healthy,

    Xujing

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