The Millennium Project

What is the Millennium experiment?

The Millennium experiment will use a computer model of the Earth’s climate to simulate the period from ca. AD 800 to AD 2100. The experiment is prepared by the Department of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Oxford. The climate model that will be used is called FAMOUS and was developed by the U.K. Met Office.

An interesting aspect of the Millennium experiment is that the University of Oxford relies on a network of volunteers (ClimatePrediction.net) to perform the computation on their home computers. This means that you can participate in this important project!

Visit the official project page at ClimatePrediction.net for more details.

What is the European research project “European Climate of the Last Millennium”?

The computer modelling experiment is part of a larger European research project “European Climate of the Last Millennium” that groups 38 research institutions. The majority of the groups work on the reconstruction of the past climate using historical documents and natural archives. To know more about this aspect of the project visit the official web site.

What did the Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris contribute to the Millennium project?

The Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris is not a partner in the European Millennium project but collaborated closely with the University of Oxford and the Met Office to evaluate the performance and the energy consumption of the FAMOUS climate model. This work led to two new versions of the climate model. The first version speeds up the computation of the model, which reduces the total energy requirement. The second version runs the simulation in the background without requiring additional energy, thus allowing users to participate in the project with 50% less energy compared to earlier experiments.

Other contributions include a new graphical interface, based on the original interface with some extra eye-candy, and a version of the climate model for CELL-based machines, including PlayStation 3, running the Linux operating system.

See also the press announcement and additional material at http://www.csl.sony.fr/millennium-press/.

How can I participate?

1. To participate in ClimatePrediction.net, you download and install BOINC:

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After the installation, launch the BOINC manager. It will ask to create an account and to what project you would like to contribute. Select ClimatePrediction.net in the list of proposed projects.

2. After the registration, you can close the BOINC manager. Your computer will continue the scientific computation in the background even when the BOINC manager is closed.

3. At any time, there are several active simulation projects on ClimatePrediction.net. BOINC will pick any work-unit that’s available on the server and start computing. That is why you may see other climate models running, such as the HadSM3 or the HADAM3P models. They are not used for the Millennium project but are part of continuing research projects at the University of Oxford.

4. You can set preferences for ClimatePrediction.net:

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Among other, you can specify that you prefer running the UK Met Office FAMOUS model, the model used in the Millennium project.

Can I see what the climate model is doing?

You can open a graphical interface for any climate model that is running on your computer. Open the BOINC manager and view the list of running tasks by selecting the Tasks tab. You can then select one of the running tasks and click the Show graphics button in the left-hand side margin.

The following image shows the surface temperatures simulated by the U.K. Met Office FAMOUS climate model (using smoothed colour scale). The screen-shot also shows the sun rising over Europe.