The Parareal Algorithm Applied to the FESOM 2 Ocean Circulation Model

TL;DR

This paper explores the application of the Parareal parallel-in-time algorithm to the FESOM2 ocean and sea-ice model, analyzing its performance and stability with different configurations and time steps.

Contribution

It demonstrates how Parareal can be integrated with FESOM2 and assesses its effectiveness and limitations in climate model simulations.

Findings

Performance depends on simulation time and fine step size.

Increasing fine step size can cause stagnation or divergence.

Strong dependence on simulation parameters observed.

Abstract

In this work the parallel-in-time algorithm Parareal was applied to the ocean-circulation and sea-ice model FESOM2 developed by the Alfred-Wegener Institut (AWI). The climate model provides one time integration method and hence, the coarse and fine propagators were defined by time step width. The coarse method was executed at the CFL condition limit, while fine step-sizes where gradually refined. As a first assessment of the performance of Parareal a low-resolution test mesh was used with default settings provided by the AWI. An introduction to FESOM2 and the straightforward implementation of Parareal on the DKRZ cluster is given. The evaluation of numerical results for different simulation intervals and fine propagator configurations shows strong dependence on the simulation time and time step-size of the fine propagator. Increasing the latter leads to stagnation and eventually divergence of the Parareal algorithm.