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Scalability of Saharan Dust Outbreak Modelling with the Advanced Weather Research and Forecasting Model Coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem)

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Numerical Computations: Theory and Algorithms (NUMTA 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14477))

Abstract

A fully coupled meteorology and chemistry model, for example, the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), analyzes air pollution diffusion, including the dust aerosol, and its radiative and microphysical effects. The Mediterranean area is frequently influenced by the Saharan Dust coming from North Africa, which is a relevant source of Particulate Matter (PM) impacting climate, air quality and human health. Moreover, the climate changes ongoing in the Mediterranean region suggest an enhancing frequency and intensity of the Saharan Dust events. In this study, we evaluated the forecasting skills of WRF-Chem simulations describing a Saharan Dust Outbreak (SDO) applied to a large domain, including Northern Africa and Central Europe. In particular, we analyzed the performances obtained using two different compilers, i.e., GNU (gfortran/gcc) and INTEL (ifort/icc). The results showed an improvement in time of the Saharan Dust simulation for INTEL over the GNU compiler, which ranges from 46% to 12% using respectively from 1 to 24 threads. Moreover, the strong scalability was assessed by analyzing the execution time as a function of the number of threads, finding that the best performance is achieved by 12 and 24 threads for INTEL and GNU, respectively.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially funded by the Next Generation EU - Italian NRRP, Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.5, call for the creation and strengthening of ‘Innovation Ecosystems’, building ‘Territorial R&D Leaders’ (Directorial Decree n. 2021/3277) - project Tech4You - Technologies for climate change adaptation and quality of life improvement, n. ECS0000009. This work reflects only the authors’ views and opinions, neither the Ministry for University and Research nor the European Commission can be considered responsible for them.

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  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Calabria, Via Pietro Bucci, 87036, Rende, Italy

    Jessica Castagna & Giuseppe Mendicino

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  1. Jessica Castagna
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  2. Giuseppe Mendicino
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Correspondence to Jessica Castagna .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    Yaroslav D. Sergeyev

  2. University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    Dmitri E. Kvasov

  3. University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    Annabella Astorino

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Castagna, J., Mendicino, G. (2025). Scalability of Saharan Dust Outbreak Modelling with the Advanced Weather Research and Forecasting Model Coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). In: Sergeyev, Y.D., Kvasov, D.E., Astorino, A. (eds) Numerical Computations: Theory and Algorithms. NUMTA 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14477. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81244-6_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-81244-6_16

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