A containerized mesoscale model and analysis toolkit to accelerate classroom learning, collaborative research, and uncertainty quantification

The containers are demonstrated with a WRF simulation of Hurricane Sandy. The demonstration illustrates the following: 1) how the often-difficult exercise in compiling the WRF and its many dependencies is eliminated, 2) how sharing containers provides identical environments for conducting research, 3) that numerically reproducible results are easily obtainable, and 4) how uncertainty in the results can be isolated from uncertainty arising from computing system differences.

Numerical experiments designed to simultaneously measure numerical reproducibility and sensitivity to compiler optimization provide guidance for interpreting NWP research. Reproducibility is independent from the operating system and hardware. Results here show numerically identical output on all computing platforms tested.

Performance reproducibility is also demonstrated. The result is an infrastructure capable of accelerating classroom learning, graduate research, and collaborative science.