Earth System Curator

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Earth System Curator

• Spanning the Gap Between Models and Datasets

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Goal

• The goal of the Earth System Curator project is
  provide a transparent interface to climate
  simulations and their data
• To do this, there must be a common description,
  expressed as metadata
• The starting point are several existing efforts
  ESMF, ESG and the GFDL Curator database

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Current Efforts

• Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF)
• NSF, NCAR, DoD, NASA, NOAA, DoE, MIT, UCLA,
  University of Michigan
• Earth System Grid (ESG)
• DoE SciDAC sponsored
• Labs ANL, LBNL, LLNL, NCAR, ORNL
• GFDL Curator database

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Earth System Modeling Framework

• Common modeling infrastructure for climate and
  weather models
• Tools for turning models into components with
  standard interfaces
• Ability to couple climate model components
• Common data structures and utilities
• Data communications
• Regridding
• Time management
• Message logging

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ESMF Goals

• Increase scientific productivity by making model
  components easier to build, combine, and exchange
• Allow modelers to take advantage of high-end
  computers (Grid computing)
• Promote new scientific opportunities and services
  through community building and increased
  interoperability of codes

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ESMF Example Application
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Example

• Each box is an ESMF component
• Components have standard interfaces so that they
  can easily interoperate
• Data into and out of components are packaged as
  state types with user-definable fields
• New components can be easily added to the
  hierarchical system
• Special couplers component support regridding and
  data sharing

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ESMF Data Logical Model
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Earth System Grid

• Make output of high-resolution, long-duration
  climate simulations available to global-change
  impacts researchers
• Enable analysis and knowledge development from
  earth system models
• Increase productivity by linking users with
  needed data

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ESG Technologies

• Grid computing
• Portal technologies
• OPeNDAP remote data access
• Globus Toolkit authentication, resource
  discovery and access

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Placeholder for ESG Logical Model
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GFDL Curator
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What is the Earth System Curator?

• Future climate projections performed at many
  sites
• Key goal of research is to reduce uncertainty of
  these projections by understanding differences in
  output from different models
• This comparative study of climate simulations has
  spawned efforts to build uniform access to both
  output datasets and climate models

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What is the Earth System Curator?

• ESC begins with a crucial insight
• the descriptors used for comprehensively
  specifying a model configuration are also needed
  for a scientifically useful description of the
  model output data
• This leads to the convergence of models and data
• There is a need for a common metadata formalism
  to unify the treatment of models and data

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Research Approach

• Study metadata structures of Earth System
  Modeling Framework (models) and Earth System Grid
  (data)
• Create a common ontology that aligns the two
  metadata models, while also allowing for eventual
  inclusion of other metadata sources
• The resulting metadata description will be the
  foundation of the Earth System Curator database

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ESMF Ontology
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GFDL Curator Ontolgy
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Issues Raised and Outstanding
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Vision (Prototype)

• Balaji's scenarios

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Curator Functions

• Allow researchers to archive and query Earth
  system models, experiments, model components, and
  model output data
• Run models locally or on computational Grid
• Auto-generate component wrappers for model
  integration

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Broader Impacts

• Facilitate Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs)
  by allowing fast setup and execution of
  experiments using different model components
• Encourage Curator-like activity in other domains
• Improve climate prediction for policy makers
• Promote the use of Curator as a normative ontology

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ESC Collaborators

• NSF Funded
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
• MIT
• Georgia Tech