Session

DescriptionFor decades, weather and climate models have significantly improved in predictive skill. This was possible, among other things, due to a steadily increasing resolution that became accessible through increasing supercomputing capacity. Increases in resolution from 500 km to 5 km have been enabled by a million-fold increase in computational power. Global kilometre-resolving simulations will eventually allow to represent individual clouds and deep convection explicitly within simulations, which is promising an additional jump in predictive skill. However, it is still not clear if and when these simulations will become reality, despite the upcoming exascale era. In this minisymposium, recent advances towards global kilometre-resolving weather and climate simulation are discussed. This will include an assessment of I/O and in-situ approaches to cope with related big data challenges, algorithmic and performance enhancements for the models, and discussions on the scientific value of these high-resolution simulations. Amongst others, findings from the HPC-driven European centre of excellence ESiWACE on exascale computing for weather and climate models as well as from the international DYAMOND intercomparison initiative will be presented to complement the HPC and science picture and to stimulate discussions about the grand challenge to allow operational weather and climate simulation at a resolution of O(1km).