Collaborated With: DEAPS, students in the biological oceanography department

The ocean surface can look like a vast, still expanse of emptiness. But with the right tools and a closer look, we can see that within the ocean is an energetic soup of physics, chemistry, and biology. How many computers does it take to run a high-resolution ocean model? Researchers at MIT have been working for decades to develop the MIT General Circulation Model (GCM), which is the highest-resolution numerical model used to study the ocean, atmosphere, and climate system. To do this, it took around 50,000 central processing units (CPUs)!
This high-res model allows scientists to study the large and smaller scale physical features of the ocean.
Join us to see the MIT GCM in action, along with models of phytoplankton blooms from the Darwin Project!