Wei-Kuo Tao
Empowering Cloud Resolving Models Through GPU and Asynchronous IO

Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Building 3 Auditorium - 11:45 AM
(Coffee and cookies at 10:30 AM)

The effects of aerosols are the largest uncertainty in current weather and climate models. This project will significantly improve the modeling at all scales of aerosol effects and their interactions with radiation and microphysics for weather prediction and climate change studies. The main objective of this AIST task is to (1) improve NASA cloud resolving models' computational performance by porting computationally-intensive components (Radiation and Microphysics) to Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which have a significant potential for higher performance, and (2) to develop an Asynchronous I/O tool to offload output data from compute nodes to reduce the idle time of computing processors, and (3) to develop a data compression mechanism to further empower the Asynchronous I/O tool.

Wei-Kuo Tao started his career at NASA in 1982 as an NRC postDoc and as a civil servant in 1989. He has more than 35 years of experience in cloud physics and modeling mesoscale convective systems. He is the primary developer of the Goddard Cumulus Ensemble (GCE) model and the leader of the Goddard Mesoscale Modeling and Dynamics Group (consisting of 9 scientists). He and his group have developed a multi-scale modeling system with unified physics (it consists of the GCE, NASA Unified Weather Research Forecast or NU-WRF, and a coupled cloud-resolving-global circulation model).

Tao was the recipient of the Goddard Earth Science Achievement Award in 2003 and William Nordberg Memorial Award for Earth Science in 2008. He was also the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award in 1993 and 2003. Tao was a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2001, and a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in 2000. He was the recipient of the "Excellent Alumni Award" from National Central University in 2006 and the "Excellent Alumni Award" from the Department of Atmospheric Physics, National Central University, which celebrated the Department's 40th Anniversary in 2009. Tao is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, Texas A&M University, National Central University, and Colorado State University.

Tao has published more than 205 papers in refereed literature, Encyclopedia, books and Monographs, and more than 120 conference presentations, on tropical cloud systems and modeling, applying the cloud resolving model in understanding cloud-precipitation-aerosol interaction, air-sea interaction, convective-stratiform interaction, cloud-radiation interaction, cloud-chemistry interaction, and cloud-large-scale environment interaction, and on developing latent heating profile retrieval using satellite data. Citation =10397, h-index =60 (Google Scholar)

IS&T Colloquium Committee Host: Karen Moe

Sign language interpreter upon request: 301-286-7040