The Climate Modeling Alliance Atmosphere Dynamical Core: Concepts, Numerics, and Scaling
This paper presents the dynamical core of the Climate Modeling Alliance (CliMA) atmosphere model, designed for efficient simulation of a wide range of atmospheric flows across scales. The core uses the nonhydrostatic equations of motion for a deep atmosphere, discretized with a hybrid approach that combines a spectral element method (SEM) in the horizontal and a staggered finite‐difference method in a height‐based, terrain‐following coordinate in the vertical. This approach leverages the high‐order accuracy and scalability of the SEM, while maintaining the computational efficiency and stability of finite differences on a staggered grid. The model's coordinate‐independent equation set allows for simulations in a variety of geometries and planetary configurations. The use of the specific total energy of moist air as a prognostic variable, along with a consistent thermodynamic formulation, ensures the conservation of energy, air mass, and water mass, even in moist atmospheres and in the presence of subgrid‐scale parameterizations, without ad hoc fixers. A horizontally explicit, vertically implicit (HEVI) timestepping strategy treats fast vertical processes implicitly and further enhances computational efficiency by allowing larger timesteps. The model demonstrates excellent strong and weak scaling on CPUs and GPUs, making it well‐suited for high‐resolution simulations on modern supercomputing architectures, including those on the cloud, which widens access to climate models.
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David C. Fritts, M. Joan Alexander
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- Published
- Mar 01, 2026
- Vol/Issue
- 18(3)
- License
- View
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