Metadata Development in the Earth System Curator Spanning the Gap Between Models and Datasets Rocky Dunlap, Georgia Tech 5 th GO-ESSP Community Meeting

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Motivation Two primary products of the climate community: datasets and the models used to produce them Models Datasets

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Motivation Many efforts in place to provide uniform access to datasets Additionally, groups are working to develop frameworks for component exchanges and interoperability But, models and datasets are currently treated as distinct and separate entities Earth System Curator’s claim: This gap is actually an artificial barrier that inhibits access to resources and results

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop What is the Earth System Curator? The goal of the Earth System Curator project is to provide a unified interface to both climate models and their output data This means a single portal will give you access to both Models Datasets

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Convergence of Models and Data 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

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Metadata Metadata is data about data Metadata that describes not only model outputs, but the actual model configuration used to produce the data Model Run Output …… ……… ………… Model Metadata

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Use Case Scenario Jane Scientist has developed a malaria model where mosquito breeding rates are modeled as a function of rainfall and temperature Because mosquitoes provide no feedback to the climate model, she can run her model “offline” from an existing climate dataset

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Use Case Scenario Using Curator she discovers the needed dataset, but finds out that the model used to produce it systematically underestimates rainfall Using the configuration description in Curator, she is able to re-run the model with new parameters to correct for the rainfall bias

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Current Efforts Numerical Model Metadata (NMM) Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) Earth System Grid (ESG) GFDL Curator database

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop ESMF Metadata Structures Component Logical entity that models a particular physical process or computational function State Import/Export – transport data to and from a component Field Physical quantity Grid

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Metadata Needs What kinds of metadata do we need for Curator to be a success? Provenance metadata Metadata to describe the complex component hierarchies of current climate models, especially components that are made up of multiple sub- components Metadata to describe applications that exist across multiple repositories (e.g., labs) Metadata to describe couplers as first class citizens

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Component Hierarchy NASA GEOS-5 ESMF Application parent/child “swappable” components

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Component Hierarchy Parent components need to identify their children children are created/invoked/destroyed by the parent component parent acts as a driver Allow for additional types of science components beyond the typical atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, etc…

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Multi-Repository Applications Components are highly decoupled and have well-defined interfaces This allows us to combine components from different labs into one model Components should be treated as standalone entities Components should be related to a particular framework (PRISM, ESMF, etc.) Configuration description stored separately from general component description

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Couplers Couplers are components that act as “translators” between two components e.g., regridding, averaging However, couplers may also have significant science code inside, and therefore should be treated as components Users want to distinguish couplers from other types of components

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Deliverables Allow researchers to archive and query Earth system models, experiments, model components, and model output data Perform technical compatibility checking How can we determine if two components will run together? What about scientific compatibility? Prototype auto-assembly of components to facilitate model runs Involves automatic code generation of simple couplers

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Broader Impacts Improve climate prediction for policy makers Facilitate Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) by allowing fast setup and execution of experiments using different model components Encourage Curator-like activity in other domains

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop ESC Collaborators NSF Funded National Center for Atmospheric Research NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory MIT Georgia Tech

5 th GO-ESSP Community Workshop Thanks! Website: Questions ?