Hands-on ocean modeling and ML with Oceananigans.jl

Come get your feet wet with Oceananigans.jl, a native Julia, fast, friendly, flexible and fun ocean model. In the first half of this workshop participants will be helped to run and analyze one of several simple ocean problems. The problems relate to state-of-the-art challenges in climate science and computational science. In the second half we will examine Julia language features, packages and design choices that enable Oceananigans.jl.

Oceananigans.jl is a state of the art ocean modeling tool written from scratch in Julia. Oceananigans uses an underlying finite volume, locally orthogonal staggered-grid fluid modeling paradigm. This allows Oceananigans to support everything from highly-idealized large-eddy-simulation studies of geophysical turbulence to large scale planetary circulation projects. The code is configured for different problems using native Julia scripting. Julia metaprogramming supports wide flexibility in numerical methods and supports large ensemble experiments. These latter style of experiment facilitate semi-automated Bayesian search that can be used to produce reduced-order models that emulate more detailed physical process models accurately. Julia typing and dispatch is used to support discrete numerics involving staggered numerical grid locations and to support (through the Julia KernelAbstractions.jl package) GPU and CPU execution from a single code base. Advanced graphics with Makie.jl and data management using NCDatasets.jl and JLD2.jl are fully integrated. Integration of Oceananigans within SciML workflows for developing neural differentiable equation improvements to physics based schemes is also possible.

In this workshop we cover both hands-on execution of a variety of different model configurations and exploring how key features of the Julia language and packages from the Julia ecosystem are used to enable a range of use cases.

The workshop will include two parts. A first part will consist of breakout room sessions. Each room will have a lead who will walk participants through configuring and running an Oceananigans instance on either a cloud resource or on participants local systems. A second part will involve multiple Oceananigans.jl team members walking through the key Julia language aspects that make Oceananigans a flexible and fun tool to use for all manner of scientific ocean modeling problems on Earth and beyond.

Workshop participants will get hands-on experience with real-world high-end scientific modeling for ocean and fluid problems in Julia. They will also learn about the how many elements of the Julia language and ecosystem can be used together to create a performant and expressive modeling tool that is also easy to engage with.