Climateprediction Cell

From Unofficial BOINC Wiki

[edit] General

To run a Climateprediction Model the world is divided into areas known as cells.

The standard model divides the world into cells 3.75 degrees of longitude by 2.5 degrees of latitude. There are 19 levels, but taking just one layer first, there are 96 by 72 cells per layer. In fact most of the information is stored for the corner of the cells. Therefore there are tables of data 73 rows by 96 wide in each layer. So 7008 pieces af data of each type is stored in each layer for a total of 133152 cells. However all of the first row represents the North Pole and the data is all the same. Likewise for the last row representing the South Pole. So it is really 6818 different data points per layer or 129542 in total.

An oddity of this system is that the cells are of different sizes depending upon the latitude. It is not too difficult to carry out an area weighted average to adjust for the different areas. (I am sure the scientists know what they are doing with this even if I was slightly suprised by the area weighting formula.)

This different size oddity is necessary as the whole model is built on receiving and sending information to 4 adjacent cells on the same level.