Abstract
Climate models generally require that results between runs are
bit-for-bit reproducible. This becomes impossible when switching the
computational platform or compiler that the model is run on. An ensemble
of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Atmosphere Model 4.0
(AM4, Zhao et al. 2018a,b)) is created by perturbing the temperature at
a random point on the order of 10-13 (in the rounding error of the
system). Previous results show that three different compilers on the
same computing platform results in a spread of the global mean
temperature of 0.14 K (Robinson et al. 2018). The current ensembles are
run on three different computing platforms with different processors:
the main production computer of GFDL with Intel broadwell/haswell, one
with Intel knights landing, and the other with Intel skylake. The
ensemble means and standard deviations for global surface temperature
are compared in order to see if the spread of rounding error in the
model is platform dependent. The means are also compared to see if they
lie within the spread of each modeling platform.