Evaluation of preCICE (version 3.3.0) in an Earth System Model Regridding Benchmark

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the general-purpose coupling library preCICE (version 3.3.0) using an Earth System Model regridding benchmark, demonstrating its competitive performance and highlighting benefits and limitations for ESM applications.

Contribution

It provides the first assessment of preCICE in an ESM regridding benchmark, comparing its performance to specialized ESM couplers and detailing necessary adaptations.

Findings

preCICE achieves comparable regridding accuracy to specialized ESM couplers

radial basis function mapping in preCICE significantly reduces errors

preCICE's generality offers potential benefits for ESM applications

Abstract

In Earth System Modeling (ESM), meshes of different models usually do not match, requiring data mapping algorithms implemented in coupling software. Valcke et al. recently introduced a benchmark to evaluate such algorithms and compared implementations in four specialized ESM couplers. In this paper, we assess preCICE, a general-purpose coupling library not limited to ESM, using this benchmark and compare our results to the original study. The generality of preCICE with its larger community offers potential benefits to ESM applications, but the software naturally lacks ESM-specific solutions. We describe necessary pre- and postprocessing steps to make the benchmark tangible for preCICE. Overall, preCICE achieves comparable results; using its radial basis function mapping yields significantly lower errors.