Supercomputing model helps analyze plate tectonics

AUSTIN, Texas — Computational scientists and geophysicists at The University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a new supercomputer model that for the first time produces an unprecedented view of plate tectonics and the forces that drive it. The paper, "The Dynamics of Plate Tectonics and Mantle Flow: From Local to Global Scales," describes the whole-earth model and its underlying algorithms. It was published in the Aug. 27 issue of Science and featured on the cover. The work demonstrates the scientific advances that can occur when multidisciplinary teams work together to capitalize on advanced mathematical algorithms and supercomputers to tackle frontier science problems. To create the model, computational scientists at Texas's Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) extended the use of a computational technique known as Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR). The team included Omar Ghattas, the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson Chair in Computational Geosciences and Professor of Geological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering, and research associates Georg Stadler and Carsten Burstedde-and Michael Gurnis, the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics and director of the Caltech Seismological Laboratory, represented Caltech.