First Announcement:
'''An Introduction to the PArallelized LES Model PALM'''

Seminar to be held at the Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany, August 22nd - 26th 2011


PALM is a parallelized large-eddy simulation model, which has been continuously developed at the department of meteorology and climatology, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, since 1997. It is used to study micro- and mesoscale turbulent boundary layer flows in the atmosphere and ocean by different groups of researchers all over the world. Compared with many other LES models, PALM includes a number of advanced features like topography, non-cyclic horizontal boundary conditions, an embedded Lagrangian particle model, or an interface for adding user-defined code. The ocean option of PALM includes salinity and the equation of state for seawater. A coupling between PALM-atmosphere and PALM-ocean has recently been developed. Data output is in NetCDF format. PALM is optimized for high performance on all kind of state-of-the-art processor architectures and scales up to several thousands of processors. It is free to use for research and can be downloaded from the web. Download informations and a detailed online documentation are available under http://palm.muk.uni-hannover.de.

'''Seminar contents'''

The one week seminar gives an overview of PALM, explains the installation procedure, and demonstrates how to carry out runs, either on Linux notebooks provided by the participants or on the SGI-ICE machine at HLRN (http://www.hlrn.de). The seminar starts with a general introduction to large eddy simulation, followed by a discussion of the basic set of equations that are used in PALM, and the numerical methods that are implemented. After explaining the PALM installation procedure, the main focus is given on how to set up PALM jobs and how to run them using the ksh-shell scripts that are provided with PALM. Further attention is also given to questions like how to extend PALM by user-defined code and how to debug the code. Setups for several standard applications will be explained in detail (e.g. convection, flow around buildings, etc.). Beside the theoretical lessons given in the morning, there will also be hands-on sessions in the afternoon, where participants carry out exercises under the guidance of the lecturers.

'''Requirements'''

Participants should have a solid background in CFD modelling, FORTRAN90, MPI, and Linux / Unix. If participants intend to use their own Linux notebooks for running PALM during the seminar, these notebooks should have at least a dual-core processor. Required software on the notebook are a FORTRAN90 compiler, an MPI library, the NetCDF library (not later than version 3.6.3), graphics software to display NetCDF data (preferably NCL), the Korn-shell (ksh), as well as subversion (a revision control system necessary to download the PALM code). subversion is already a part of many Linux distributions (e.g. openSuSe).

The lecturers will be Siegfried Raasch, and other members of the PALM group from the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany.

'''Costs / fee'''

The participant fee will be about 100-200 € and includes seminar handouts and a welcome party. Accomodation costs, other meals, and transport costs are not included.


If you are interested in participating the seminar, or if you have any further questions, please send an email to [[mailto:drueke@muk.uni-hannover.de|Sonja Drüke]] before May 15th, 2011. This is without obligation. Official sign up will be possible after a second announcement by the end of May, where more detailed informations will be given.