11:00
Can rounding errors be beneficial for weather and climate models?
Abstract
Inexact hardware trades reduced numerical precision against a reduction
in computational cost. A reduction of computational cost would allow
weather and climate simulations at higher resolution. In the first part
of this talk, I will introduce the concept of inexact hardware and
provide results that show the great potential for the use of inexact
hardware in weather and climate simulations. In the second part of this
talk, I will discuss how rounding errors can be assessed if the forecast
uncertainty and the chaotic behaviour of the atmosphere is acknowledged.
In the last part, I will argue that rounding errors do not necessarily
degrade numerical models, they can actually be beneficial. This
conclusion will be based on simulations with a model of the
one-dimensional Burgers' equation.