Ice Sheet Modeling with PISM

TUESDAY, JUNE 19
1-2 p.m. 010 West Ridge Research Building (WRRB)

UAF Associate Professor of Mathematics Ed Bueler will give two presentations Tuesday, June 19, in room 010 of the West Ridge Research Building as part of an ongoing series demonstrating how computer and information-based technologies are applied to solving real world problems.

Bueler will give a free, general science public seminar at 1 p.m. in WRRB 010 on "Ice Sheet Modeling using PISM." Since 2003, UAF's ice sheet modeling group has developed a Parallel Ice Sheet Model used to simulate the flow and energy balance within the whole Antarctic ice sheet, including fast-flowing ice streams and ice shelves, at high resolution. The software is an open source project that has already been used by several groups worldwide. One goal is to couple PISM to global circulation models to improve predictions of century- to millennium-scale response to global warming. The seminar will include an overview of what PISM can do and how it is done.

Bueler will offer a second seminar on Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. in WRRB 010 for software developers and scientists, which is also free and open to the public, titled "Using the PETSc scientific programming toolkit."

Abstract: "Our group has used PETSc (the Portable Extensible Toolkit for Scientific computation) to build an ice sheet model which runs in parallel on any computer supporting MPI (the message passing interface). PETSc has two purposes for the group. First, it abstracts MPI so that the application does not have to manage message passing for any modeling task that uses vectors or matrices distributed across processors. Secondly, PETSc solves sparse linear algebra and nonlinear equations in parallel, with a choice of algorithms at the command line. Both aspects of PETSc will be discussed, with an emphasis on the first."

The weekly summer science seminars are hosted by the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center and take place every Tuesday, except July 3, at 1 p.m., through Aug. 7. Scientists and researchers who are using the highly sophisticated and exceptionally fast computational abilities at ARSC will present the weekly seminars. UAF's supercomputing center has aided in the development of 3-D computer models of tsunamis, space weather and volcanic eruptions, which have helped provide accurate and timely emergency response information to the public. Other projects focus on computer modeling of the ocean to detect shrinking polar ice caps or monitor fluctuations of fish, bird and marine mammals.

For more information, contact ARSC Chief Scientist Greg Newby at .

 

Arctic Region Supercomputing Center
PO Box 756020, Fairbanks, AK 99775 | voice: 907-450-8600 | email:

home | search | about | support | news | science | resources