NG-R2C - GC-Faster

The University of Cambridge is the leading development centre for the chemistry component of the United Kingdom Chemistry and Aerosols (UKCA) model, a key component of the Met Office's collaboratively developed UK Earth System Model (UKESM). The University have contributed significantly to international model intercomparison exercises using UKCA and UKESM. They have regularly contributed new model developments and functionality to UKCA.

Next Generation Research to Climate (NG-R2C) is a component project within the Met Office's Next Generation Modelling Systems (NGMS) Programme. The Programme's aim is to reformulate and redesign our complete weather and climate research and operational/ production systems, including oceans and the environment, to allow us to fully exploit future generations of supercomputer for the benefits of society. Preparation of our new Momentum®-based UKESM configuration is a key outcome in the Met Office's corporate strategy and accompanying Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

The need to reduce the compute cost and increase the speed of our weather and climate models is stronger than ever. Reducing numerical precision from double precision to single precision offers a promising route to significantly reducing the computational cost of Earth System Models, and single precision implementations of Momentum model components are roughly 30% quicker than their double precision counterparts. UKCA remains one of the major model components operating in double precision, making it an attractive target for optimisation.