On July 30, 2007, a group of SoMAS faculty and graduate students in atmospheric sciences and physical oceanography were introduced to one of the world’s top supercomputers at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The group participated in a joint conference, “Using NY Blue to Meet Grand Challenges in Climate Modeling,” hosted by Stony Brook University, BNL and International Business Machines (IBM). “NY Blue” refers to the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer that was acquired by the University this year and was recently installed at BNL. It is currently the fastest computer in the world for non-military use, and is ranked as the fifth largest. It has 36,864 processors that can deliver 100 teraflops of computational speed.
”I am very excited about the type of climate sciences that can be carried out on this fantastic computer”, said SBU’s Provost Robert McGrath, who is also Co-Director of the New York Center for Computational Sciences.
Dr. James Davenport, Director of the BNL Computational Science Center, said that early in the summer, three areas of collaborative research were identified using the Blue Gene. These include climate modeling and energy, computational biology and drug development, code optimization on modem high performance computers. Meetings on the remaining two themes will take place this fall.
Dr. Minghua Zhang, SoMAS Associate Dean and the Director of the Institute for Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres, co-organized the conference and discussed some current climate modeling research taking place at SBU and BNL. Other SoMAS faculty members who presented their research included Dr. Brian Colle, Dr. Edmund Chang, Dr. Dong-Ping Wang, and Dr. Nicole Riemer.
Throughout the day, SoMAS faculty and students worked with scientists in the BNL atmospheric division and the IBM Deep Blue Supercomputing Division to discuss the super-computer’s climate modeling applications. The joint team agreed on three foci of collaborative research: (a) Modeling of Regional Climate Change and Energy, (b) Outstanding Science Problems in Climate Models, and (c) Predictability and Data Assimilation.
“This machine will enable us to do the type of science that we could only dream of doing before,” Dr. Zhang said. “This meeting marked the birth of a virtual SBU/BNL/IBM institute for climate change research that is specifically positioned to take advantage of this great machine. The meeting mapped out the first steps for the institutions and the investigators to reap the benefit of this facility.”
For more information: http://www.bnl.gov/newyorkblue/ http://www.top500.org/lists/2007/06
