PALM - A PArallelized Large-Eddy Simulation Model for Atmospheric and Oceanic Flows

PALM is a large-eddy simulation (LES) model for atmospheric and oceanic flows which is especially designed for performing on massively parallel computer architectures. PALM is free software. It can be redistributed and/or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License (v3).

A PALM simulation using the letters "PALM" as surface heat flux pattern. Check out the gallery for more movies!

Some of PALM's highlights are

• excellent scaling, so far tested up to 32000 cores
• online data analysis (during model runs) in order to avoid I/O bottlenecks
• topography realized on cartesian grid (allows for steep topography)
• non-cyclic horizontal boundary conditions including turbulent inflow
• code can be switched to ocean version with salinity equation and equation of state for seawater
• embedded parallelized Lagrangian particle model for various applications (footprint calculation, simulation of cloud droplet growth, visualization, etc.)
• interface which allows users to plug in their own code extensions without modifying the default code
• advanced shell scripts for installing and running the code in interactive and batch mode are available
• code is permanently maintained and improved by the PALM group and other users; code management is based on subversion

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PALM news

[ 2014/03/19 ] PALM is now part of the SPEC ACCEL benchmark test for intensive parallel applications running under OpenACC (​more)
[ 2013/10/30 ] Nudging technique implemented (see here)
[ 2013/07/22 ] Improved animation of dust devils has been added to the gallery

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PALM users world map

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Access

If you are interested in using or just testing the code, please create an account using the register form. This account will give you access to the PALM repository and also allow you to login on this trac-server, e.g. to submit trouble tickets, or to edit the wiki, if you have proper access permissions. As a registered user you will also be informed about new PALM updates by email. If you have further questions please contact ​raasch@muk.uni-hannover.de.

We appreciate any comments on the contents of this server which may help us to improve our documentation. Please contact us by ​email or just send a ticket if you are a registered user.