What is NSEAM?

• NSEAM is the Naval Research Laboratory's Spectral Element Atmospheric Model.

• NSEAM is a prototype for the Next-Generation hydrostatic primitive equation model that will be incorporated within NOGAPS (the Navy's Operational Global Atmospheric Prediction System).

Why do we need NSEAM?

• The current dynamical core inside of NOGAPS uses the spectral transform method.

• In order to effectively use massively parallel computers without sacrificing accuracy, NRL is exploring spectral elements as a replacement to the spectral transform method.

• Spectral element methods are high-order accurate methods that scale efficiently on these types of computers.

• For the resolution T239 L30, NSEAM is 200% faster than NOGAPS on 96 processors of the NAVO IBM SP4 (which was ranked the 18th fastest computer in the world by SuperComputing 2003).