by Judith Curry
[A] technique called direct statistical simulation dramatically reduces the time and brute-force computing that current simulation techniques require. The process does a good job of modeling fluid jets, fast-moving flows that form naturally in oceans and in the atmosphere. The findings are a key step toward bringing powerful statistical models rooted in basic physics to bear on climate science.
Direct Statistical Simulation of Out-of-Equilibrium Jets
S.M. Tobias and J.B. Marston
We present direct statistical simulation of jet formation on a β plane, solving for the statistics of a fluid flow via an expansion in cumulants. Here we compare an expansion truncated at second order (CE2) to statistics accumulated by direct numerical simulations. We show that, for jets near equilibrium, CE2 is capable of reproducing the jet structure (although some differences remain in the second cumulant). However, as the degree of departure from equilibrium is increased (as measured by the zonostrophy parameter), the jets meander more and CE2 becomes less accurate. We discuss a possible remedy by inclusion of higher cumulants.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 104502 (2013) Full manuscript [link]
A post at futurity.org discusses possibilities re climate modelling. Excerpts:
The research shows that a technique called direct statistical simulation dramatically reduces the time and brute-force computing that current simulation techniques require. The process does a good job of modeling fluid jets, fast-moving flows that form naturally in oceans and in the atmosphere. The findings are a key step toward bringing powerful statistical models rooted in basic physics to bear on climate science.
Direct statistical simulation is a new way of looking at climate. “The approach we’re investigating,” Marston says, “is the idea that one can directly find the statistics without having to do these lengthy time integrations.”
“Say you wanted to describe the air in a room,” Marston says. “One way to do it would be to run a giant supercomputer simulation of all the positions of all of the molecules bouncing off of each other. But another way would be to develop statistical mechanics and find that the gas actually obeys simple laws you can write down on a piece of paper: PV=nRT, the gas equation. That’s a much more useful description, and that’s the approach we’re trying to take with the climate.”
Conceptually, the technique focuses attention on fundamental forces driving climate, instead of “following every little swirl,” Marston says. A practical advantage would be the ability to model climate conditions from millions of years ago without having to reconstruct the world’s entire weather history in the process.
The theoretical basis for direct statistical simulation has been around for nearly 50 years. The problem, however, is that the mathematical and computational tools to apply the idea to climate systems aren’t fully developed. That is what Marston and his collaborators have been working on for the last few years, and the results in the new paper show their techniques have good potential.
For their study, Marston and Tobias simulated the jets that form as a fluid moves on a hypothetical spinning sphere. They modeled the fluid using both the traditional numerical technique and their statistical technique, and then compared the output of the two models.
They found that the models generally arrived at similar values for the number of jets that would form and the strength of the airflow, demonstrating that statistical simulation can indeed be used to model jets.
There were limits, however, to what the statistical model could do. The study found that as pace of adding and removing energy to the fluid system increased, the statistical model started to break down. Marston and Tobias are currently working on an expansion of their technique to deal with that problem.
Since completing the study, Marston has integrated the method into a computer program called “GCM” that he has made available for download via Apple’s Mac App Store. The program allows users to build their own simulations, comparing numerical and statistical models.
Marston expects that researchers who are interested in the field will download it and play with the technique on their own, providing new insights along the way. “I’m hoping that citizen-scientists will also explore climate modeling with it as well, and perhaps make a discovery or two,” he says.
There’s much more work to be done on this, Marston stresses, both in solving the energy problem and in scaling the technique to model more realistic climate systems. At this point, the simulations have only been applied to hypothetical atmospheres with one or two layers. The Earth’s atmosphere is a bit more complex than that.
“The research is at a very early stage,” Marston said, “but it’s picking up steam.”
JC comment: Exhilarating to see a new approach for climate models. The app looks extremely cool. I look forward to your thoughts on this.