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| E3SM (Energy Exascale Earth System Model) | |
|---|---|
| Name | E3SM (Energy Exascale Earth System Model) |
| Developer | United States Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
| Released | 2016 |
| Programming language | Fortran, C, MPI (Message Passing Interface) |
| Operating system | Linux |
| License | Open-source |
E3SM (Energy Exascale Earth System Model) is a high-resolution climate and earth system model developed to simulate coupled processes of the Earth with a focus on energy-relevant regional impacts. It is designed to exploit exascale-class supercomputers and to support research programs in climate science, hydrology, cryosphere dynamics, and atmospheric chemistry. The project is led by the United States Department of Energy and coordinated across multiple national laboratories, university partners, and international research centers.
E3SM integrates components representing the atmosphere, ocean, land surface, sea ice, and biogeochemical cycles to produce simulations for regional and global climate assessments. It targets questions relevant to energy infrastructure, water resources, and extreme weather by providing high-resolution, coupled projections and process-level diagnostics. The model supports both short-term hindcasts and long-term projections used by federal programs such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy.
E3SM emerged from Department of Energy initiatives to build exascale-ready models following strategic plans from Office of Science (DOE), with development milestones set by collaborations among Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Early design work referenced precedents from models like Community Earth System Model, Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS), and Community Atmosphere Model versions. Funding and governance evolved through partnerships with universities such as University of Washington, Colorado State University, and Princeton University, and through coordination with international centers including Met Office and Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.
E3SM's modular architecture couples an atmospheric component based on Community Atmosphere Model physics with an ocean component derived from Parallel Ocean Program, a sea-ice component influenced by Los Alamos Sea Ice Model, and a land component that incorporates hydrology and biogeochemistry informed by Community Land Model. The model uses mesh technologies inspired by Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) and parallel frameworks employing MPI (Message Passing Interface), OpenMP, and accelerators studied at Argonne National Laboratory. E3SM implements parameterizations for convection, cloud microphysics, radiative transfer, and aerosol interactions drawing on process studies from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NCAR, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
E3SM is applied to assess impacts on hydropower generation, grid reliability under changing climate, and water resources for regions managed by agencies like Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Researchers use E3SM for studies of Arctic amplification relevant to Arctic Council stakeholders, Antarctic ice-sheet interactions pertinent to Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, and regional climate extremes examined by National Center for Atmospheric Research. E3SM outputs inform integrated assessment models used by International Energy Agency and policy analyses for Federal Emergency Management Agency planning.
Model evaluation programs compare E3SM simulations with observational datasets from platforms such as Buoy, Argo (oceanography), CERES, and MODIS, and with reanalyses produced by ECMWF and NCEP. Validation studies investigate biases in precipitation, temperature, and sea-ice extent against records from institutions like NOAA and paleoclimate constraints from Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project. Peer-reviewed assessments have been published in journals associated with American Geophysical Union and Nature Climate Change authorship.
E3SM development emphasizes scalability on leadership-class machines such as Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory supercomputers. Performance engineering has explored scaling on architectures including Summit (supercomputer), Theta (supercomputer), and exascale prototypes informed by the Exascale Computing Project. Workflows integrate data formats like NetCDF and use workflow managers comparable to tools from ESGF and Pangeo communities to handle large ensemble experiments.
Governance is managed by the DOE Office of Science with steering from national laboratories and contributions from university consortia including Stanford University, MIT, and University of California, Berkeley. The project sustains an open-source community with code repositories, user support, and coupling standards coordinated with initiatives such as ESGF and the Community Earth System Model consortium. E3SM has influenced training programs at institutions like Columbia University and collaborations with international bodies including World Meteorological Organization to advance climate modeling capabilities.
Category:Earth system models Category:Climate modeling