Weather Forecasting Using GPU-Based Large-Eddy Simulations

Since the advent of computers midway through the twentieth century, computational resources have increased exponentially. It is likely they will continue to do so, especially when accounting for recent trends in multicore processors. History has shown that such an increase tends to directly lead to weather and climate models that readily exploit the extra resources, improving model quality and resolution. We show that Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) models that utilize modern, accelerated (e.g., by GPU or coprocessor), parallel hardware systems can now provide turbulence-resolving numerical weather forecasts over a region the size of the Netherlands at 100-m resolution. This approach has the potential to speed the development of turbulence-resolving numerical weather prediction models.