A climate simulation over Europe was among the first scientific projects to run on the “Piz Daint” hybrid supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in 2014. Climate scientists in the research group led by Professor Christoph Schär set out to compute the 1999-2008 climate over Europe. Thanks to the HPC resources they did not work with a resolution in the tens of kilometres as before, but at grid intervals of just two kilometres. The simulations were to model convective cloud formation: how moist air rises through the atmosphere and turns into rain showers and thunderstorms. Simulations like these are useful for early warning of storms and for long-term climate scenarios and adaptation strategies concerning climate change. These simulations require significant computing power that is provided by High Performance Computing.
The researchers have compared and evaluated their decade’s-worth of simulations against real-world observations and measurement data from the same period. It was evident that the high-resolution simulations outstripped by far conventional models at reproducing diurnal cycles of precipitation over the decade, especially in summer.