As Iain Inglis has said in the CPDN forum news:

There are two CPDN news announcements, which subscribers to the RSS feed may already have seen:

Myles Allen wins the Appleton Medal

Retirement of HadSM3 and HadAM3P models

Regional HadAM3P models are in beta testing. When they are launched on the main CPDN project members will again have a model choice.

Please complete all the models you have already downloaded.

BOINC NEWS which can be seen here

London Citizen Cyberscience Summit
The London Citizen Cyberscience Summit on September 2-3 will be a chance for scientists and citizens to learn about the latest breakthroughs in citizen cyberscience. The event will feature speakers from a number of BOINC projects.

The programme announces a talk by Myles Allen, the head of climateprediction.net, among a host of interesting speakers. This is an exceptional opportunity for CPDN members and crunchers of other Boinc projects within travelling distance of London. On the website you can register your interest now.

CPDN logo mugs

You may have seen from the news on the climateprediction.net index page that climateprediction.net logo + globe mugs are now available from the CafePress shop. I have one and like it. The cost of shipping is the same whether one orders one mug or more. Each purchase will provide US$2 profit towards CPDN's operating costs.

Geoengineering experiment

Many members ran HadCM models for the CPDN Geoengineering experiment.

Nature has published a letter (short article) about the experiment's results. The abstract is here: Regional climate response to solar-radiation management by Katharine Ricke and M. Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and Myles Allen of CPDN at the University of Oxford. The potential political implications of their findings are significant.

There is a CPDN forum thread about this publication with further links here.

HadAM3P Regional Models

3 new applications have been released today. They all consist of a HadAM3P global model coupled with a higher resolution regional model and run for one model year. The regional models cover Europe, Pacific North West America and Southern Africa.

• Available on all platforms.
  
  
• You may need to select the models in your project preferences (now includes a map to allow the selection of a location within each region that will be monitored on task pages).
  
  
• The downloads for these models are large:
  
  
  
  • 103.5MB of region independent data files. These will only be downloaded once.
    
  • 12.4MB of application version stamped files. These will only be downloaded once but will have to be replaced if a new version is released.
    
  • 5.5MB of region dependent data files. These will only be downloaded once for each region.
    
  • 11.7MB of date dependent data files. These will have to be downloaded when you run a model for a date range you haven't already run.
    

  
  

• These models have a much higher memory requirement than FAMOUS (around 250MB compared to 30MB) and the findings in beta testing suggest that they don't scale up very well on multi-core systems (a slow down of between 7 and 10% when 2 tasks are run in parallel on a 2 or 4 core system with 2MB of memory). This slow down might not be as apparent on systems with more memory.
  
  
• The regional models cover different sized areas and have different resolutions. They return a trickle and upload a file at the end of each month and upload a further file on completion.
  
  
• European region
  
  
  
  • Takes about 4 days of 24/7 crunching on a 2.4GHz computer.
    
  • Monthly upload files are about 3.5MB and the final upload is about 32MB.
    
  • 2,386.39 credits for a completed task.
    

  
  

• Pacific North West American region
  
  
  
  • Takes about 5 days of 24/7 crunching on a 2.4GHz computer.
    
  • Monthly upload files are about 6MB and the final upload is about 27MB.
    
  • 3,005.88 credits for a completed task.
    

  
  

• Southern African region
  
  
  
  • Also takes about 4 days of 24/7 crunching on a 2.4GHz computer, but slightly faster than Europe.
    
  • Monthly upload files are about 13MB and the final upload is about 35MB.
    
  • 2,244.09 credits for a completed task.
    

  
  

Thyme Lawn composed the above announcement about the regional models. He has now posted in the CPDN forum News threads:

HadAM3P Regional Models - corrections

I made a couple of silly errors in the announcement I made yesterday. That post has now been corrected.

... a 2 or 4 core system with 2MB of memory

That should, of course, have been 2GB of memory.

European region

• Monthly upload files are about 3.5MB and the final upload is about 32MB.
  

Southern African region

• Monthly upload files are about 13MB and the final upload is about 35MB.
  

I managed to transpose the upload sizes. Sincere and grovelling apologies to anyone who has downloaded a European regional model and been hit with much larger uploads than they expected.

Thanks to Ingleside and astroWX for pointing out my errors.

But neither he nor I can correct the above post on this forum.

There has been an accident during the archiving of server data and some members have temporarily lost some CPDN credit. Milo is working on the problem. Read about it here.

HadAM3P regional models

There is now an explanation of the Regional Experiment in the Experiments section of the ClimatePrediction website. You can read about how a small part of the Earth is modelled at higher resolution than CPDN has ever achieved before while incorporating global data. There are three different groups of researchers for the Pacific North West, Europe and Southern Africa models. In the Climateprediction preferences in your account you can if you wish select one or more of these regions. Read more here.

Reminder: HadAM3P models are memory-intensive. If a multicore computer runs a full load of them simultaneously they will probably slow each other down. Try to run some FAMOUS alongside them.

CPDN main project

CPDN Geoengineering Experiment

Many of us ran 80-year 2000 - 2080 HadCM3L models for the Geoengineering Experiment which is a joint project for Oxford University and Carnegie-Mellon University in the US. Kate Ricke and Daniel Rowlands now need more of these models for an extension to this experiment, described in an extra paragraph which has been added at the end of the Geoengineering Experiment page. Milo posted a link to a first publication about this experiment here.

A small number of these HadCM models have already been released on CPDN and if they run well more will follow. These are long models. You can select or deselect them by editing the climateprediction.net preferences in your account. HadSM is fairly long, though not as long as HadCM3L. If you prefer shorter models select HadAM3P EUR, SAF or EUR (though none are available at the moment) and FAMOUS.

Check the Server status page for current model availability.

CPDN WeatherAtHome

CPDN launched WeatherAtHome with the three regional models on 17 November. Read about it on the Guardian website where CPDN researcher Sue Rosier explains how these models can be used to show extreme weather events in much greater detail than with global models.

You can watch a short video of Sue describing the WeatherAtHome initiative here. There is also a description of WeatherAtHome on the CPDN website where you will see that research groups from three countries will be involved in analysing the regional model results.

WeatherAtHome is not a new Boinc project. It is an initiative within the existing CPDN project. It is aimed at new members only who want to run the regional models.

What does WeatherAtHome consist of for its new crunchers?

1. It has a special Registration page. This enables ClimateAtHome members to choose the regional model type they want before they join the project. (Normally when one joins a Boinc project the first task one receives is sent at random from all the types available on the project server.)

Existing members do not need to do this. We can select and change the model types we want by editing the climateprediction.net Preferences in our account. A link to our account is in the blue menu on the left side of this page. We can see which model types are currently available for our computer by looking at the links to the Server Status page and the Applications page in the same menu.

2. New members who join CPDN through the WeatherAtHome registration page will receive a Boinc version pre-configured differently from usual. CPU usage is set at 60%, not the usual 100%. This is to protect computers that have limited memory/RAM because the regional models are memory-intensive. It also protects laptops from overheating.

Existing members do not need this specially-configured version of Boinc. In our CPDN account in the Computing Preferences we can change the CPU usage for all our computers on all projects. If we want to vary the CPU usage for an individual computer we can open its Boinc manager and in the Advanced menu > Preferences > Processor usage we can change the settings.

3. At the moment WeatherAtHome members can only receive the regional models for Windows. Versions for Linux and Mac may be made available later.

Existing CPDN members do not need this Windows restriction. Although the regional models are only available for CPDN members with Windows at the moment, members with Linux or Mac can run HadCM (which is much longer) for the Geoengineering experiment or FAMOUS for the Millennium experiment.

4. WeatherAtHome members can of course also change the settings in their accounts, for example for CPU usage or to select different model types.

Welcome to all the new WeatherAtHome members.

Existing members should not rejoin CPDN through WeatherAtHome. Please complete all your current models which will all be used.

WeatherAtHome

Edit: With regard to item #2 in the above post Milo, our programmer, has told me that this 60% CPU usage preconfiguration for WeatherAtHome members did not work. It is set as 100% as the default for everyone. If you have a laptop we advise you to reduce this 100% value either in the Boinc manager Advanced menu > Preferences > Processor usage, or in the Computing Preferences in your account. And when using a laptop always raise its little feet to increase air flow and cooling.

Neil Massey, who is one of the CPDN researchers, has said in the Independent Forum News:

Milo's last day

Today is Milo Thurston's last day on climateprediction.net. On behalf of the team I'd like to thank him for all his hard work over the past 4 years and for keeping the project infrastructure running smoothly. We wish him well for his new project, which I'm sure Milo would be happy to let you know about.

Thanks again, Neil and the CPDN team.

As you can see on the left of the climateprediction.net index page we have now processed over 100,000,000 model years!

Since some days http://www.climateprediction.net/index.php or http://climateprediction.net/ is unavailable and my result cannot be up loaded. Someone knows what hgoing on, did they switch off during Christmas days ?
Greetings from Germany
Dr.Mabuse

ClimatePrediction.net News and Announcements

CPDN Main Project

After a number of false starts with faulty greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing parameters the second phase of the RAPIT project has now started in earnest.
HadCM3N tasks have names in the format hadcm3n_{umid}_{start year}_40_* (where 40 is the number of model years the task runs for).
{umid} is a 4 character universal model identity, with the first character being the main indicator of the type of model being run as follows:

• 'o', 'p' and 'q' are control models with no GHG forcing. These should continue through the resubmission processes at 1940 and 1980 (and beyond if the scientists decide that's required) with no problems.
  
  
• at the first resubmission (hadcm3n_{umid}_1940_40_*) each successful control should, in addition, spawn a new series with a range of GHG forcing parameters. This has been the problem area, with the {umid} first character set as follows:
  

'r' - a large batch of workunits which all fail at the end of the first model year before a trickle is generated. Most of these have been completed but if you have a task with the name format hadcm3n_rXXX_1940_40_ it should be aborted.

's' - another large batch, this time failing at the end of the 10th model year, just before the trickle and upload file are generated. If you have a task with the name format hadcm3n_sXXX_1940_40_ it should be aborted. The workunits for these tasks have been cancelled on the server to prevent reissues.

'b' to 'i' - small test batches which will fail at the end of the first or 10th model year. These should be aborted.

'j' - a small test batch with GHG forcing brought forward from 1950 to 1941. These tasks should complete as long as the climate doesn't go wild.

'k' - a small stress test batch with highly variable GHG forcing. These tasks should also complete as long as the climate doesn't go wild.

't' - this is the large batch of work currently being generated. Tasks with the name format hadcm3n_tXXX_1940_40_ should complete as long as the climate doesn't go wild.

A small number of hadcm3n_tXXX_1980_40_ workunits have been generated from 'o' series tasks which have already completed the second phase. This shouldn't have happened (the _tXXX_1980_ batch should be a continuation of the _tXXX_1940_ batch). These have been cancelled on the server to prevent reissues and should be aborted.

NOTE: tasks with the name format hadcm3n_tXXX_1980_40_ will start appearing again in 2 or 3 weeks and will be from genuine resubmission workunits. These should not be aborted.

Thyme Lawn
Forum moderator

ClimatePrediction.net News and Announcements

Lots of regional models (EU at present), now available, with more to come.
Thyme Lawn
Forum moderator

ClimatePrediction.Net (AKA CPDN)News and Announcements

The recently released regional models were of two types:

Some new ones, which are failing for reasons as yet unknown, and
Some auto-regen models, which are apparently running OK. This is confirmed by a few reports.

Les Bayliss
Forum moderator

ClimatePrediction.Net - (AKA CPDN) - News and Announcements

A new batch of regional models were created over the weekend, all of them regens from previously completed work, so they should be OK.
Les Bayliss
Forum moderator

ClimatePrediction.Net - (AKA CPDN) -News and Announcements

Mac users on CPDN Main and Beta Projects

We have evidence from a number of users that all CPDN applications can start failing immediately after an upgrade to BOINC 6.12.26. This appears to be related to a permissions change which makes it impossible for the controller process to launch the worker. Resetting the project (or detaching and reattaching) should fix the problem.

See here for further details.

Thyme Lawn
Forum moderator