1. Earth System Curator Spanning the Gap Between Models and Datasets

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. ESMF Example Application

7. 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

8. ESMF Data Logical Model

9. 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

10. ESG Technologies Grid computing Portal technologies OPeNDAPOPeNDAP – remote data access Globus Toolkit Globus Toolkit – authentication, resource discovery and access

11. Placeholder for ESG Logical Model

12. GFDL Curator

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. ESMF Ontology

17. GFDL Curator Ontolgy

18. Issues Raised and Outstanding

19. Vision (Prototype) Balaji's scenarios

20. 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

21. 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

22. ESC Collaborators NSF Funded National Center for Atmospheric Research NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory MIT Georgia Tech