Walker Institute for Climate System Research
WRN Climate catastrophe research using the Japanese Earth Simulator
WRN’s link with the Earth Simulator Centre
Through the UK Walker Institute for Climate System Research, one of the main WRN partners, WRN
climate catastrophe research is being undertaken on the Japanese Earth Simulator, one of the world’s
most powerful supercomputers:
 Located in Yokohama, Japan
 Built by the Japanese government in 2002 under the Japanese Agency for MaritimeEarth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)
 Consists of 5120 Arithmetic Processors with 10TeraBytes of main memory
 Has a peak performance of 40TeraFlops (40 million million calculations per second)
 Will be upgraded in September 2008 - the new system is designed to deliver a peak
performance of 131TeraFlops, making the ES the 6th most powerful supercomputer in
the world based on the current rankings.
 One of the basic principles behind the ES is the production of reliable data to protect
human lives and properties from natural disasters and environmental destruction.
Walker Institute scientists, including the WRN Research Fellow, are part of the UK- Japan Climate
Collaboration (UJCC) team who work alongside Japanese scientists at the Earth Simulator Centre
and at the University of Tokyo to produce simulations of the global climate system and extreme
climate events.
Advancing the ability of climate simulation
Computational models of the global climate system are currently the most advanced tools available
for simulating the response of the climate to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.
The power of the Earth Simulator is enabling scientists to produce increasingly complex global climate
models. This has led to improved simulations of the past, present and future climate– allowing us to
have increased confidence in projections of the future evolution of climate and weather systems.
A major advance associated with modeling the climate at very high resolution is the ability to simulate
not only the average climate, but also regional weather systems and extreme events, such as
typhoons, hurricanes, droughts and heat waves; events are associated with severe damage to life
and property. This leads to simulation outputs applicable to regional and local impacts assessment,
information which has significant value to the insurance industry.
Tropical cyclone simulation
Using global climate models with unprecedented resolution (60km) to simulate tropical cyclone tracks
under present and future atmospheric conditions, alongside ultra-fine detail (2.8km) simulations of the
structure of tropical cyclones, we are able to capture local impacts information about extreme rainfall
and high winds.
Simulating the location, frequency and severity of tropical cyclones in a dynamical climate system,
with the aim of incorporating this information into the catastrophe modelling process, will allow risk
analysis to take into account the effect of climate variability and change on climate catastrophe risk.
Improved understanding of weather and climate risk
An essential component of this work is to provide the insurance industry with a better understanding
of atmospheric hazards and their relationship with regional and global climate variability. Allowing
insurers access to this information has powerful implications. It will give underwriters much greater
confidence in understanding future risk across key regions and weather perils, allowing the insurance
market to be much better prepared for the level of hazardous weather events that may arise from
climate change.
WRN Climate catastrophe research using the Japanese Earth Simulator
Dr Jane Strachan
Walker Institute for Climate System Research
An advanced visualization of some of the features modelled by NUGAM, prepared with NASA's Earth Observatory
group. Red areas to the north and south of Indonesia highlight a pair of tropical cyclones.
13th July
2007
Ultra-high resolution (2.8km) simulation of the precipitation associated with Typhoon Man-Yi, which hit Japan on the 14th July
2007. This simulation was produced on the Earth Simulator Multi-scale Simulator of the Geo-environment (MSSG) model.
WRN Climate catastrophe research using the Japanese Earth Simulator
Dr Jane Strachan