Jamison Daniel/National Center for Computational Sciences

I’m a fool for pretty pictures, and there’s some cool-looking stuff coming out of the climate modeling programs at ORNL. The above map shows the instantaneous “net ecosystem exchange” (NEE) from a global climate simulation.

Forrest Hoffman of ORNL’s computational Earth sciences group explains:

“In this case, the Western Hemisphere is facing the sun, so what we see is a strong negative NEE (shown in green) in which vegetation is taking up CO₂ from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The yellow areas are taking up less CO₂ because of low sun angle (e.g., Northern Canada), less vegetation (e.g., in the Western U.S.) or because of the seasonal cycle (e.g., parts of South America).”

Hoffman added: “I believe this snapshot was created for the month of July from our simulation, so it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere.”

He said the snapshop here is similar to animation that highlights tropical forests at this site: http://www.climatemodeling.org/c-lamp/results/viz/nee_clamp_daynight.mpg

“That animation shows a net release of CO₂ from the biosphere (i.e., a positive NEE), primarily in the evening, in red and an uptake of CO₂ by the biosphere (i.e., a negative NEE) in green. The colors change as the sun rises and sets. The CO₂ release in the evening is primarily the result of heterotrophic respiration, which comes from microbes and other organisms that decompose litter (e.g., leaves, woody debris, dead roots, etc.) and soil.”

For more information on the C-LAMP project, check out this site.

Hoffman said all simulations that ORNL performed for the C-LAMP project, including those used for visualizations, were run on “Phoenix” — a Cray X1E — from 2006 through early 2008.

He said the computer has a unique architecture, with custom-designed vector processors, but a peak performance of only 18.5 trillion calculations per second. He said the computer is scheduled to be decommissioned Sept. 30.