Norwegian climate researchers have offered significant findings to the recent IPCC climate report.
As many as 200 million CPU hours have been spent to simulate climate processes, and experiment and test the Norwegian earth system model, NorESM.
Many Norwegian climate researchers who have contributed to the report use NorESM in their research. NorESM is a highly detailed model used to understand the climate system and the effects of climate change by experimenting with the climate in the model.
If we have a goal of limiting global warming to 2 ° C, then simulations are run to study how much emissions the earth can withstand to achieve such a goal. Through model development and calibration of parameters, the researchers try to get the model to simulate a realistic and stable climate.
Due to slow processes in the ocean and the carbon cycle, the model has to simulate thousands of model years to find its equilibrium. More than 45,000 model years are calculated in connection with the report. If all simulation jobs only had been run on Betzy, Norway's most powerful supercomputer, the entire machine would have been reserved for 48 days to deliver this result. In comparison, an ordinary PC would have used 5,700 years!
Read more about the Norwegian climate researches contribution to the IPCC report (in Nowergian)