Modelling & software

Computer simulations are an indispensable tool in our work. We specialize in the use of numerical models in environmental research, as well as in the engineering of open-source research software for use in environmental physics and, more broadly, in computational sciences. For high-performance computing, we employ AGH Cyfronet supercomputing resources. Methods and applications of numerical simulations and software engineering are part of our course offering. We leverage open-source software development and dissemination workflows for knowledge transfer across scientific disciplines and towards users outside of academia.

Operational weather prediction using WRF

contact: Mirosław Zimnoch

Our WRF-based daily workflow is set up to compute 48-hour predictions on a country-wide domain, with initial and boundary conditions fetched from the NOAA GFS output. The forecasts are publicly available in form of weather maps and meteograms at meteo.fis.agh.edu.pl website.

Simulation studies in atmospheric dynamics

contact: Mirosław Zimnoch, Michał Gałkowski

Methane concentration simulation over Upper Silesia

We employ state-of-the-art modelling systems for research in atmospheric dynamics, carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, on local and regional scales. We actively share our knowledge and experience with students running academic courses focused on modelling, and engaging students in research projects.

Chernobyl fire simulation in April 2020

Our team performs simulation studies using both Eulerian (e.g., using WRF) and Lagrangian models (e.g., Hysplit, STILT). These are installed either on our own computational cluster or, when particularly complex systems are analysed, on the AGH Cyfronet supercomputing machines.

WRF simulation performed by students in a course taught at the ZFŚ

Open-source research software engineering

contact: open-atmos-krk team

Our team, with collaborators from partnering institutions as well as AGH students, develops and maintains several open-source Python packages:

numba-mpi numba-mpi PyPI package numba-mpi conda package numba-mpi AUR package

offers access to the Message Passing Interface (MPI) routines from Python code that uses the Numba just-in-time (JIT) compiler, enabling use of MPI communication in high-performance, multi-threaded, JIT-compiled Python code

use case: py-pde developed at Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

more in numba-mpi SoftwareX paper: Derlatka et al. 2024

 

PySDM PySDM PyPI package & PySDM-examples PySDM-examples PyPI package

a package for Monte-Carlo particle-resolved simulations of the dynamics of aerosol/cloud/precipitation particles (Super Droplet Method), intended to serve as a building block for simulation systems modelling atmospheric flows, featuring CPU (Numba) and GPU (CUDA) backends

use case: calibration workflow developed at Caltech CliMA Team

more in PySDM JOSS papers: Bartman et al. 2022, de Jong et al. 2023

 

PyMPDATA PyMPDATA-MPI PyPI package, PyMPDATA-examples PyMPDATA-examples PyPI package & PyMPDATA-MPI PyMPDATA-MPI PyPI package

Numba-accelerated Pythonic implementation of the MPDATA algorithm of Smolarkiewicz et al. used in geophysical fluid dynamics and beyond for numerically solving generalised convection-diffusion PDEs in 1D, 2D and 3D structured meshes with coordinate transformations

more in PyMPDATA JOSS paper: Bartman et al. 2022

 

PyPartMC PyPartMC PyPI package

Python interface to the PartMC particle-resolved Monte-Carlo atmospheric aerosol simulation system, developed with the PartMC team at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

more in PyPartMC SoftwareX paper: D'Aquino et al. 2024

 

open-atmos-jupyter-utils open-atmos-jupyter-utils PyPI package

Ever wondered how come Jupyter defaults to raster inline graphics format (and not svg), does not offer a "save as pdf/svg" button below every plot and does not offer a way to include animated graphics that render on GitHub? Our feelings exactly! Here are our solutions: just replace pyplot.show() with show_plot() and use show_anim() for animations.