The Energy Department has granted $70 million in funding to seven research projects aimed at updating an ultra-high-resolution representation of Earth that runs on high-performance computing systems and supports climate change studies.
The projects center around DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model, an exascale supercomputer simulation designed to help scientists understand changing weather patterns, the department said Tuesday.
DOE expects E3SM research and development work to advance computer models of ocean circulation in the Atlantic and the Antarctic.
“Being able to understand and predict what is happening in a system as complex as planet Earth is crucial to finding solutions to climate change,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of New Mexico will lead the potential five-year research efforts, with an initial obligated fund of $14 million.
The grant is part of the DOE’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program. A peer review process took place to select the winning projects.
