Pangolin v1.0, a conservative 2-D advection model towards large-scale parallel calculation

• Published in: Geoscientific Model Development Vol. 8; no. 2; pp. 205 - 220
• Main Authors: Praga, A, Cariolle, D, Giraud, L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 09-02-2015; European Geosciences Union; Copernicus Publications
• Subjects: Advection; Advection (Earth sciences); Analysis of PDEs; Atmospheric models; Comparative analysis; Computer Science; Computer simulation; Computers; Cores; Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing; Exploitation; Latitude; Longitude; Mathematical models; Mathematics; Ocean, Atmosphere; Parallel computers; Parallel processing; Preservation; Scale (ratio); Scaling; Sciences of the Universe; Two dimensional models
• ISSN: 1991-9603; 1991-959X; 1991-962X; 1991-9603; 1991-962X; 1991-959X
• DOI: 10.5194/gmd-8-205-2015

To exploit the possibilities of parallel computers, we designed a large-scale bidimensional atmospheric advection model named Pangolin. As the basis for a future chemistry-transport model, a finite-volume approach for advection was chosen to ensure mass preservation and to ease parallelization. To overcome the pole restriction on time steps for a regular latitude–longitude grid, Pangolin uses a quasi-area-preserving reduced latitude–longitude grid. The features of the regular grid are exploited to reduce the memory footprint and enable effective parallel performances. In addition, a custom domain decomposition algorithm is presented. To assess the validity of the advection scheme, its results are compared with state-of-the-art models on algebraic test cases. Finally, parallel performances are shown in terms of strong scaling and confirm the efficient scalability up to a few hundred cores.