Documenting numerical experiments in support of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6)

Numerical simulation, and in particular simulation of the earth system, relies on contributions from diverse communities, from those who develop models to those involved in devising, executing, and analysing numerical experiments. Often these people work in different institutions and may be working with significant separation in time (particularly analysts, who may be working on data produced years earlier), and they typically communicate via published information (whether journal papers, technical notes, or websites). The complexity of the models, experiments, and methodologies, along with the diversity (and sometimes inexact nature) of information sources, can easily lead to misinterpretation of what was actually intended or done. In this paper we introduce a taxonomy of terms for more clearly defining numerical experiments, put it in the context of previous work on experimental ontologies, and describe how we have used it to document the experiments of the sixth phase for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). We describe how, through iteration with a range of CMIP6 stakeholders, we rationalized multiple sources of information and improved the clarity of experimental definitions. We demonstrate how this process has added value to CMIP6 itself by (a) helping those devising experiments to be clear about their goals and their implementation, (b) making it easier for those executing experiments to know what is intended, (c) exposing interrelationships between experiments, and (d) making it clearer for third parties (data users) to understand the CMIP6 experiments. We conclude with some lessons learnt and how these may be applied to future CMIP phases as well as other modelling campaigns

Bringing the Global Climate Projections Archive to UK Researchers

Looking at the CMIP5 archive, the contribution from CEDA and looking at the next stage of CMIP6

Developing an open data portal for the ESA climate change initiative

We introduce the rationale for, and architecture of, the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Open Data Portal (http://cci.esa.int/data/). The Open Data Portal hosts a set of richly diverse datasets – 13 “Essential Climate Variables” – from the CCI programme in a consistent and harmonised form and to provides a single point of access for the (>100 TB) data for broad dissemination to an international user community. These data have been produced by a range of different institutions and vary across both scientific and spatio-temporal characteristics. This heterogeneity of the data together with the range of services to be supported presented significant technical challenges. An iterative development methodology was key to tackling these challenges: the system developed exploits a workflow which takes data that conforms to the CCI data specification, ingests it into a managed archive and uses both manual and automatically generated metadata to support data discovery, browse, and delivery services. It utilises both Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) data nodes and the Open Geospatial Consortium Catalogue Service for the Web (OGC-CSW) interface, serving data into both the ESGF and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). A key part of the system is a new vocabulary server, populated with CCI specific terms and relationships which integrates OGC-CSW and ESGF search services together, developed as part of a dialogue between domain scientists and linked data specialists. These services have enabled the development of a unified user interface for graphical search and visualisation – the CCI Open Data Portal Web Presence

The CMIP6 Data Request – with overview of IPCC process

The CMIP6 Data Request specifies the data requirements for the CMIP6 model inter-comparison project. The presentation includes a review of the CMIP5 archive and of the process of exploitation by the IPCC

The CMIP6 data request: The next generation climate archive

A poster to show the CMIP6 data request: The next generation climate archive. Phase 6 of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP6) will be organised through a collection of endorsed model inter-comparison projects (MIPs) with focussed scientific objectives. Co-ordinating teams submit proposals for experiments and data analysis to the CMIP panel. Final proposals from 23 “Model Inter-comparison Projects” proposing analysis, 19 of them proposing a total of 195 different experiments, in addition to a core set of “DECK” experiments and the CMIP6 Historical Simulation defined by the CMIP panel, have been distributed to modelling groups. Endorsement of proposals will depend on the level of support, in the form of commitments to participate; ● As part of the MIP proposals, data request templates have been filled out by each group; this information will be consolidated and circulated to modelling groups April 15th; ● Modelling groups asked to provide commitments to the CMIP panel by April 22nd; ● A clean draft of the CMIP6 Data Request will be published at the end of July 2015; ● Version 1 CMIP6 Data Request approved at WGCM meeting (31 October 2015)

Strategie Roadmap for the Earth System Grid Federation

This article describes the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) mission and an international integration strategy for data, database and computational architecture, and stable infrastructure highlighted by the authors (the ESGF Executive Committee). These highlights are key developments needed over the next five to seven years in response to largescale national and international climate community projects that depend on ESGF for success. Quality assurance and baseline performance from laptop to high performance computing characterizes available and potential data streams and strategies. These are required for interactive data collections to remedy gaps in handling enormous international federated climate data archives. Appropriate cyber security ensures protection of data according to projects but still allows access and portability to different ESGF and individual groups and users. A timeline and plan for forecasting interoperable tools takes ESGF from a federated database archive to a robust virtual laboratory and concludes the article