The University of Hamburg's "Planet Simulator"

[Jim Hunt]

Branching off from the DASIM thread, here's a place to discuss the open source "Planet Simulator" from The University of Hamburg.

Here's details of my own first experiment, constructed in honour of Earth Day 2013:

The Raspberry Pi Planet Simulator Cluster

From my perspective it's the perfect platform for experimenting with distributed climate models that utilise MPI, but there are a multitude of other possibilities. Any suggestions?

 

[Jim Hunt]

To whet your appetite here are a few screenshots, taken after running the model for a few virtual months. There's a look at the "Expert" version of the configuration utility, an overview of the output windows, plus a closer look at precipitable water and Level 3 of the atmosphere.

Apart from a cluster of Raspberry Pis, experiments confirm that the Planet Simulator runs pretty much "out of the box" on Scientific Linux and Mac OS X. News on other potential platforms in due course.

In case you're wondering, a 6 core x64 Linux box goes a lot faster than a cluster of 3 Pis!

P.S. My piccies just "failed security checks"
Now to find out why!?
P.P.S. Problem solved, but I'm not sure why! I tried http instead of https, then a .JPG which failed, then a .PNG that worked, then the rest of the .PNGs

[Dromicosuchus]

...I really hesitate to ask this, as I can only suppose it comes across as a fairly obnoxious query (given that I'm pretty sure that I already know the answer), but I don't suppose this is a model that someone with no programming or command line experience could use?  My experience with using different programs is generally limited to clicking on a little icon, having the program magically spring to life and present me with assorted buttons and menus to click on, and my immediate efforts to use this (really very snazzy looking) program have left me keenly aware of my own ignorance in this area.  Are the necessary skills to deal with this things that would take me months to acquire, or is there any hope that a good afternoon or two of reading and work could bring me to the level of knowledge necessary to make use of this?

[anonymous]

I would say it *highly* depends on your previous knowledge. You need a fair amount of background in computer science, modelling and earth science. However, there is a good chance the lack of experience in one field can be substituted by the other two. Plasim was the first model I managed to run locally and I had no clue about circulation models at this time. I gave myself a 'challenge' in the sense to simply see seasons over a time span of 50 years and a few hours later I had a video showing me exactly that.

From there it was pure fun to tweak and hack the model's parameters to achieve ice planets, model water world (without Costner) and a runaway greenhouse effect. Plasim is probably not complex enough to run experiments worth for inclusion in the next IPCC report, but if you're like me and enjoy a visual confirmation of what you expect is/might happening on a/this planet, you'll find every second you invest will be payed back.

On the other end of the spectrum of user experience you might feel like an illiterate trying to make sense of a word processing program. But if you are determined to make that lesson you'll find no other model with this amount of possibilities behind a user interface that simple to use and easy to install.

If you still hesitate, read the manual once and post your questions here.

[Jim Hunt]

I don't suppose this is a model that someone with no programming or command line experience could use?

You don't need any programming experience, but you will need to acquire a modicum of "command line experience" in order to download the pre-requisites and then build the program before it will "magically spring to life" and allow you to "point and click". Using Linux at least, it's basically just a matter of copying and pasting from the instructions to your command line and pressing the "Enter" key a few times.

What sort of computer/operating system are you hoping to run the Planet Simulator on? As arctcio says, if you get stuck just ask a question here.