Development of the High Performance Version of GEOS-Chem (GCHP) to enable broad community access to high-resolution atmospheric chemistry modeling in support of NASA Earth Science

Global modeling of atmospheric chemistry is a grand scientific and computational challenge because of the need to simulate large coupled systems of order ~100-1000 chemical and aerosol species interacting with transport on all scales. Atmospheric chemistry models must be integrated online into Earth system models (ESMs) to address a range of fundamental Earth Science questions but must also be able to operate offline, where the chemical continuity equations are solved using meteorological data as input. The offline approach has advantages of simplicity, accessibility, reproducibility, and application to inverse modeling. It is thus highly attractive to atmospheric chemistry researchers. The GEOS-Chem global 3-D model of atmospheric chemistry, developed and managed with NASA support, is used offline by hundreds of research groups worldwide with meteorological fields from the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), and the exact same model also operates online as a chemical module within the GEOS ESM at the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). Through partnership with GMAO, we have recently developed a high-performance version of GEOS-Chem (GCHP) using the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) in its Modeling Analysis and Prediction Layer (MAPL) implementation, that permits GEOS-Chem to operate offline in a distributed-memory framework for massive parallelization consistent with the NASA GEOS system. GCHP allows GEOS-Chem to exploit the native GEOS cubed-sphere grid for greater accuracy and computational efficiency. Global simulations of stratosphere–troposphere oxidant–aerosol chemistry at very high resolution such as cubed-sphere C720 (∼12 km) become feasible. Here we solicit support from AIST to make this high-performance version of GEOS-Chem highly accessible by the atmospheric chemistry community in sustained partnership with GMAO. This will allow the atmospheric chemistry community to better exploit the GEOS system through the use of GEOS-Chem, and to advance atmospheric chemistry knowledge for the benefit of the GEOS system and NASA's mission. Specifically, we propose to: 1) Update to current version of MAPL and enable seamless updates to benefit from future software engineering advances at GMAO for ESM coupling and data transfer, and to contribute MAPL enhancements produced by the GEOS-Chem community for atmospheric chemistry applications. MAPL developments at GMAO will increase GCHP functionality and capabilities, such as the use of stretched-grid simulations. 2) Improve GCHP performance and portability to promote usage across the large GEOS-Chem community and beyond. This effort includes (a) fully parallelizing the model to remove current bottlenecks, thus enabling finer resolution simulations that better emulate the GEOS system, (b) improving the build system and using software containers to facilitate access and ease model configuration, and (c) supporting a mature multi-node capability on the Amazon cloud. 3) Generate an operational cubed-sphere archive of GEOS assimilated meteorological data for driving GCHP. This task will increase accuracy in modeling transport and will provide a better foundation for collaboration between the GEOS-Chem community and GMAO. This project will greatly increase the accessibility and value of NASA GEOS products and GEOS-Chem to the atmospheric chemistry community worldwide, from academic researchers to air quality managers and policy analysts. It will not only exploit NASA's investment in atmospheric modeling to benefit the atmospheric chemistry community, but also engage that community in long-term partnership with GMAO to advance atmospheric chemistry within the NASA Earth modeling and data assimilation system. Thus, this project is at the core of NASA's ACF mission to develop powerful, re-usable tools to support scientific analysis of large volumes of data, often from disparate sources, as needed by the Earth Science Division in the 5-20 year timeframe.

Advance Earth system science knowledge through the identification, development, and demonstration of innovative information systems technologies

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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