Recent CEM Group Ph.D. graduate Adam Herrington just published a paper with advisor Kevin Reed and a group of NCAR scientists, led by Peter Lauritzen, in the August issue of the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. The study documents the implementation of a lower resolution physics grid for the spectral element dynamical core, available in the latest version of CESM. It is shown that the lower resolution physics grid conserves important properties such as mass and energy, mitigates grid induced noise and does not degrade the resolution of the model. The lower resolution physics grid offers substantial cost savings with little to no downside. The published article can be found here:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019MS001684