Climate science or climatology is the scientific study of the earth’s climate, where climate is the term representing weather conditions averaged over a period of time. Climate models are mathematical models used to quantitatively describe, simulate and study the interactions among the components of the climate system -atmosphere, ocean, land and sea-ice. CCSM (Community Climate System Model) is a state-of-the-art climate model, and a long-running coupled multicomponent parallel application involving component models for simulating the components of the climate system. Each of the component models is a large-scale parallel application, and the parallel components exchange climate data through a specialized component called coupler. Typical multi-century climate simulations using CCSM take several weeks or months to execute on most parallel systems. In this thesis, we study the applicability of a computational grid for effective execution of long-running coupled multi-component climate applications like CCSM. Initial studies of the application characteristics led us to develop a dynamic component extension strategy for temporal inter-component load-balancing. By means of experiments on different parallel platforms with different number of processors, we showed that using our strategy can lead to about 15% reduction and savings of several days in execution times of CCSM for 1000-year simulation runs. Our initial studies also indicated that unlike typical grid applications, CCSM has limits on scalability to very large number of processors and hence cannot directly benefit from the large number of processors on a computational grid. However, its long-running nature and the limits of execution imposed on jobs on most multi-user batch queueing systems, led us to investigate the benefits of its execution on a grid of batch systems. The idea is that multiple batch queues can improve the processor availability rate with respect to the application thereby possibly improving its effective throughput. We explored this idea in detail with simulation studies involving various system and application characteristics, and execution models. By conducting large number of simulations with different workload characteristics and queuing policies of the systems, processor allocations to components of the application, distributions of the components to the batch systems and inter-cluster bandwidths, we showed that multiple batch executions lead to upto 55% average increase in throughput over single batch executions for long-running CCSM. Having convinced ourselves of possible advantages in performance, we then ventured to construct an application-level middleware framework. Our framework supports long duration execution of multi-component applications spanning multiple submissions to queues on multiple batch systems. It coordinates the distribution, execution, rescheduling, migration and restart of the application components across resources on different sites. It also addresses challenges including execution time limits for jobs, and differences in job-startup times corresponding to different components. Further, within the framework, we developed robust rescheduling policies that decide when and where to reschedule the components to the available resources based on the application execution characteristics and queue dynamics. Our grid middleware framework resulted in multi-site executions that provided larger application throughput than single-site executions, typically performed by climate scientists, and also removed the bottlenecks associated with a single system execution. We used this framework for long-running executions of CCSM to study the effect of increased black carbon aerosols and dust aerosols on the Indian monsoons. Black Carbon aerosols are essentially of anthropogenic origin and occur due to improper burning of fossil fuels, and dust is a naturally occurring aerosol. The concentrations of both these aerosols is high over the Indian region. We study the impact of these aerosols on precipitation and sea surface temperature (SST) through multi-decadal simulations conducted with our grid-enabled climate system model. Our observations indicated that increasing the concentrations of aerosols leads to an increase in precipitation in the central and eastern parts of India, and a decrease in SST over most of Indian ocean.

River discharge can affect ocean surface temperature by altering stratification within the oceanic mixed layer. A hitherto unexplored aspect of present climate is the feedback of river runoff onto climate. This thesis presents an investigation of the impact of global river runoff on oceans and climate using a fully coupled global climate model, Community Climate System Model (CCSM). Two model simulations for a period of 100 years have been carried out: 1) a reference run (CTRL) that incorporates all the features of a global coupled model with river runoff into the ocean embedded in it, and 2) a sensitivity run (NoRiv) in which the global river runoff into the ocean is blocked. Comparison of model climate devoid of fluvial discharge with the reference run reveals the significance of fluvial discharge in the present climate. By the end of 50 years of NoRiv experiment, salinity growth slows down and reaches a quasi-stable state. Regions close to river mouths exhibited maximum salinity rise that can potentially alter local density and stratification. On an average, denser and saltier waters in the NoRiv run annihilate barrier layer and form a deeper mixed layer, compared to CTRL run. Density gradient created by the modulation in salinity set forth anomalous currents and circulation across coastlines that carries coastal anomalies to open ocean, preventing local salinity buildup. Arctic Ocean, Bay of Bengal, northern high latitude Pacific and the Atlantic are the most affected regions in terms of changes in salinity and temperature. Model simulations demonstrate that major transformation in Arctic freshwater budget can have potential impact on northern Pacific and Atlantic climate. In the absence of runoff, global average sea surface temperature (SST) rise by about ~ 0.5oC, with major contribution from northern higher latitude oceans. In the Pacific, high latitude warming is related to deepening of mixed layer as well as the northward transport of low latitude warmer waters. Substantial cooling in the central equatorial Pacific (~1oC during winter) can alter large-scale ocean-atmosphere circulation, including El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The reinforcement of Pacific and Atlantic western boundary currents aids the transport of warm saline water from low latitudes to higher latitudes. The results suggest that the river runoff can have potential impact on oceanic climate. Response of Indian summer monsoon rainfall to global continental runoff is also examined. In the NoRiv run, average summer monsoon rainfall over India increased by ~ 0.55 mm day−1. Consistent with the increase in annual average Indian monsoon rainfall, all other northern hemispheric monsoon systems showed an increase, while southern hemispheric monsoons weakened. Associated with enhanced monsoon, the periodicity of ENSO in the NoRiv run changes as a result of cooling tendency in the equatorial Pacific, a sign of consistent La Niña. Equatorial Pacific cooling, in spite of a global ocean warming trend, is found to be primarily because of the enhanced local easterly winds and resultant strong equatorial upwelling. Cold anomaly due to upwelling spread entire equatorial Pacific basin within a span of 50 years. The La Niña situation in the Pacific favored increased monsoon rainfall over Indian subcontinent. Another surprising result of this study is the strengthening of ENSO-monsoon relationship in the NoRiv run. This suggests that the river discharge can be considered as a dampening force in the ENSO-monsoon relationship. Northern hemisphere showed a clear warming in the NoRiv simulation compared to CTRL, the result of which is an enhanced trans-hemispheric gradient. Cross-equatorial winds triggered by this gradient blow from southern hemisphere and shift the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) northward, increasing the precipitation in the northern hemisphere. The cooling in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and the warming in the west, reflected in the increase in number of positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) events (9 positive and 5 negative IOD events in the last 50 years), also favored summer-time rainfall over India.