The Climate Code Foundation Software for Climate Science Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

What is the CCF? A non-profit founded in 2010, based in the UK; Two software consultants, working unpaid and part-time; Advisory committee of a dozen experts; A growing network of climate scientists and others; Several projects and publications; 3 Summer of Code projects in 2011; Assorted volunteers (e.g. Wordpress admin); and big plans.

Foundation goals "to promote public understanding of climate science, by increasing the visibility and clarity of the software used in climate science, and by encouraging climate scientists to do the same; by encouraging good software development and management practices among climate scientists; by encouraging the publication of climate science software as open source.” Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

What is the problem? Scientists have to write code, but: They aren’t trained; They aren’t rewarded; There is no incentive to publish it. The public need to know about climate science, but: The science isn’t accessible; The practices aren’t transparent; They are lied to about ‘tricks’ and secrecy. Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

History : Concerned about climate change, but unsure what to do; 2007: NASA GISTEMP code released, widely criticised; 2008: started open-source Clear Climate Code project, rewriting GISTEMP in Python in our spare time; 2010: founded Climate Code Foundation, a non-profit, to continue this work and broaden it. 2011: increasingly well-known by climate scientists: publications, GSoC projects, invited to speak at workshops and conferences (and Google). Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

Clear Climate Code Over-riding goal is clarity: code which interested members of the public can download, run, read and understand. Open-source, of course. First target NASA GISTEMP: ccc-gistemp.googlecode.com 12 KLOC of Fortran (etc) lines of Python (including 1500 of docstrings) fixed minor bugs. fosters new science: one paper in press, two draft. Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

Google Summer of Code 2011 Improvements to ccc-gistemp, for public engagement (Filipe Fernandes, UMass Dartmouth). New homogenization code (Daniel Rothenberg, Princeton). Visualising Holocene climate reconstructions using open data (Hannah Aizenman, CUNY) Three projects, all successful: Scientists have never heard of GSoC, but when they do they think it's awesome. We hope to do more in Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

Science Code Manifesto Code: All source code written specifically to process data for a published paper must be available to the reviewers and readers of the paper. Copyright: The copyright ownership and license of any released source code must be clearly stated. Citation: Researchers who use or adapt science source code in their research must credit the code's creators in resulting publications. Credit: Software contributions must be included in systems of scientific assessment, credit, and recognition. Curation: Source code must remain available, linked to related materials, for the useful lifetime of the publication. Nick Barnes talk at Google, sciencecodemanifesto.org

Future Plans Changing policies: Transparency; Rewards for all research products. Training scientists: Basic techniques (testing, version control, agile, etc); Code publication and reuse. Providing resources: White papers, blog posts; Directories. Building networks; Leading by example: ccc-gistemp; ccf-homogenization; etc…. Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

Funding I say "non-profit". Approximately “non-revenue". All accounts open. Total revenue to date £ (a web-scraping academic project). Total costs £ , not counting this trip. Personal lost income to date well over $50,000. Funding model seeking $200K-$800K annually from corporate or NGO sponsorship (plus some project money from academic collaborations). Too much? Not enough? Depends who you ask. Open to suggestions! Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

Google tools wishlist: Code: DOI minting, more reliable SCM servers, some sort of VM-based test framework? Charts: SVG, or some other path to publication-quality figures. Docs: working pagination. Scholar: sort results by date; author pages, institution pages. Do Microsoft Academic Search but better. Summer of Code: More scientific/academic participation. Fixing terrible web interface. Summer comes twice a year. Science: Great free online science data tools. Please. Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org

Thank you: Google, for GSoC, GoogleCode, and much more; GSoC, for flying me to CA, for mentor summit; Peter Norvig, for endorsing the manifesto, and inviting me; Everyone, for listening. Questions? Nick Barnes talk at Google, climatecode.org