MOSAIK News

PALM Seminar (Oct 10 - Oct 14, 2016, IMUK, Hannover)

An Introduction to the PArallelized LES Model PALM

PALM is a parallelized large-eddy simulation model, which has been continuously developed at the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology (IMUK), 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 allowing explicit treatment of cloud droplet physics, 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 is also realized. Data output is in NetCDF format. PALM is optimized for high performance on all kind of state-of-the-art processor architectures and scales on up to several tens of thousands of processors. It is free software and can be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License (v3). Download information and a detailed online documentation is available under ​http://palm.muk.uni-hannover.de.

Seminar contents

The one week seminar gives an overview of PALM, and demonstrates how to carry out runs - on Linux notebooks provided by the participants or by IMUK-LUH. 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 a brief introduction to the PALM installation, the main focus is given on how to set up PALM simulations and how to run them using the bash-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.), the focus will be on urban applications this year. Additionally, we will offer separate sessions on an introduction to the PALM code for model developers. Beside the theoretical lessons given in the morning, there will be hands-on sessions in the afternoon, where participants carry out exercises under the guidance of the lecturers. The lecturers will be Siegfried Raasch, Björn Maronga, and other members of the PALM group at IMUK.

Practical information

Further information can be found in the official seminar announcement​ or ​here.

MOSAIK Kick-off (Jun 30 - Jul 01, 2016, ZIB, Berlin)

The first MOSAIK group meeting took place following the official Kick-off meeting in Berlin. The central focus of the meeting was to present the planned work of all cooperation partners and to identify interactions between the subprojects. Moreover, benchmark tests, data exchange between the subprojects, and the concept of the energy balance solver of the surface within the new model were discusses in three independent workshop sessions.

MOSAIK group picture at the Zuse Institute Berlin (​ZIB)

BMBF "Stadtklima im Wandel" - Kick-off (Jun 29-30, 2016, Harnack-Haus, Berlin)

The official Kick-off meeting of the BMBF funding programme "Stadtklima im Wandel" (urban climate under change, [UC]²) took place at the Harnack-Haus, owned by the Max Planck Society, in Berlin, Germany. About 70 people attended to the Kick-off meeting (see group picture). Day one focused on the presentation of the planned work within the four funded joint projects (Module A: MOSAIK, Module B: 3D0, Module C: KliMoPrax, !UseUClim). The second day was filled with two workshops on model validation and user tests.

Group picture at the BMBF Kick-off meeting)