Topic outline

    • Compute Ontario Colloquium (14 Jan 2026)

      This week's colloquium: "Pushing the Limits of Global Ocean Modelling on the Trillium Supercomputer" by Kayhan Momeni (U. Toronto). The Compute Ontario Colloquia are bi-weekly Zoom presentations on Advanced Research Computing, High Performance Computing, Research Data Management, and Research Software topics, delivered by staff from three Compute Ontario consortia (CAC, SciNet, SHARCNET) and guest speakers. The colloquia are one hour long and include time for questions. No registration is required. Most presentations are recorded and uploaded to the hosting consortium video channel.

      Date: Wed., 14 Jan. 2026 - 12:00 pm
      Events:
    • Abstract

      This session will describe our early experiences using the Trillium supercomputer to develop a next-generation Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm) global ocean simulation. Our project will culminate in a run of the MITgcm with horizontal grid spacing of 1/96° (~1 km). It will be the highest-resolution realistic ocean model produced to date.
      This simulation will contain several advances relative to the widely used 1/48° MITgcm simulation (also known as LLC4320), including increased vertical and horizontal resolution, an updated global bathymetry, the use of a more accurate surface pressure solver, the addition of ice-shelf cavities around Greenland and Antarctica, hourly atmospheric forcing, realistic river discharge, and more accurate astronomical tides. These improvements directly address long-standing issues in earlier high-resolution MITgcm simulations, for example, a misplaced Gulf Stream, a crude representation of Antarctic shelf currents, and anemic tropical instability waves.
      The resulting model output will offer an unprecedented benchmark for studies of internal tides and internal waves, turbulence parameterization, and sea-surface height variability. All configurations, tools, and outputs will be openly released, positioning this Canada-led effort as a major global resource for oceanography and climate modelling.