The Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) Project is designed to perform coupled climate simulations at high resolution on current and next generation DOE leadership class supercomputers. In its current formulation, the ACME atmospheric model employs the primitive equations of motion, which constrains its maximum resolution and limits the physical phenomena that it can resolve. Our team proposes to remove this constraint by implementing a non-hydrostatic (NH) atmospheric model in the ACME Framework. Collaboration with SciDAC FASTMath institutes will facilitate improvements to key technologies needed for the non-hydrostatic model. This model will be tested in a variable res- olution framework, which enables very high resolution simulation regions at reasonable computational costs. The correct performance of the NH model will be verified with standard dynamical core tests, and by demonstrating that it reproduces expected climate statistics in the hydrostatic regime. We will demonstrate performance of this model at high resolutions beyond the cloud-resolving scales and into the Large-Eddy Scale by employing highly refined variable resolution meshes. The completed model will be applied to evaluate the limitations of existing turbulent mountain stress and gravity wave drag parameterizations, in order to demonstrate the power of non-hydrostatic models to investigate new phe- nomena and enhance the quality of present day 1/4 degree hydrostatic simulations.