1. ESMF Strategic Discussion Cecelia DeLuca NOAA ESRL/University of Colorado ESMF Executive Board/Interagency Meeting June 12, 2014

2. ESMF Governance

3. The ESMF team is about 10 people, fully distributed: Cecelia DeLuca (50%, CO) Rocky Dunlap (GA), Cupid development and outreach Robert Oehmke (CO), grid remapping lead Fei Liu (NJ – direct NRL funded), application support Kathy Saint (FL), application support Mat Rothstein (CO), grid remapping Ryan O’Kuinghttons (80%, CO, Spain), Python interface and metadata Gerhard Theurich (CA), overall lead and NUOPC development, application support Walter Spector (CA), porting, I/O, and ESMF data structures Peggy Li (CA – 50%, direct NASA funded), performance analysis Joe Jacob (CA – 50%, direct NASA funded), Silverio Vasquez (CO), software integration Distributed Team

4. NASA: ESMF Development in Support of NASA Applications NASA: Cupid: An IDE for Model Development and Modeler Training ONR: National Unified Operational Prediction Capability/ESPC ONR: Optimized Infrastructure for the Earth System Prediction Capability ONR: An Integration and Evaluation Framework for ESPC Coupled Models NSF: Earth System Bridge: Spanning Scientific Communities with Interoperable Modeling Frameworks NOAA CPO: ESMF Infrastructure for Modeling and Data Services NOAA CPO: ESMF-CESM Collaboration NOAA CPO: Software modeling infrastructure: Couple NCEP EMC NEMS to MOM5/ice for more capable CFSv3 and single framework for EMC/CPC NOAA NWS: Infrastructure Development for the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability NOAA SWPC: Initial Coupling between the Whole Atmosphere Model (WAM) and the Ionosphere-Plasmasphere-Electrodynamics (IPE) Model Awards

5. Synergies Many synergistic efforts! For example: NUOPC interfaces for HYCOM created at NRL MRY were leveraged by NOAA EMC Improvements added to the NUOPC interface to HYCOM at EMC are being sent back to NRL SSC and MRY NUOPC wrappers for CICE and WaveWatch 3 can be leveraged for multiple modeling groups ESPC work with MOAB is leveraging ongoing DOE investment in that finite element framework NASA investments in Cupid can be leveraged for training across agencies Data analysis and visualization packages (e.g. NCL, pyFerret, UV-CDAT, IRIS) are using ESMF grid remapping because it supports a huge variety of model grids More generally: ESMF stays flexible and state of the art through interactions with many diverse research groups – and operational groups that use ESMF can benefit from that flexibility

6. Governance and Partnerships Most development tasks come from user emails to ESMF support. Tasks longer than two weeks are prioritized by a Change Review Board. ESMF is directed by a multi-agency Executive Board. This body approves the ESMF Strategic Plan and defines the project’s organizational structure and processes. Programmatic direction comes from an Interagency Working Group of project sponsors.

7. ESMF Strategy 2010 Deliver base infrastructure (ESMF 5.2.0r): this created a common vocabulary for coupling data structures and initiated community-based reusable software 2012 Deliver additional constrains and conventions (NUOPC 6.2.0): this completed the technical design needed for a target level of interoperability 2013 Shift from infrastructure development to delivery of applications Write initial white paper (Next steps in modeling infrastructure) Write proposals and acquire funding to advance applications using ESMF (NASA, ESPC, NSF, NOAA) Shift staff from infrastructure development to application development Based on synergies among funded projects, initiate the Earth System Prediction Suite Reformulating the white paper as a community-written BAMS article 2014: Complete ESPS and use it to define a training and outreach strategy It’s not enough to talk about common modeling infrastructure, or even to deliver it – it needs to be used in models and data services in order to evolve.

8. Why is ESMF Different? What makes ESMF different from center-specific frameworks? To satisfy many incoming research and operational requirements, ESMF developers had to design for a wide range of grid, data, time, and component structures – this creates flexibility in the design and supports knowledge transfer ESMF infrastructure is built for deployment by modeling and data systems at multiple sites, and well supported (documented, regression tested, responsive support mailing list, examples) The infrastructure is resource-efficient in that its development is shared among agencies, and its technical path informed by many expert development partners Development priorities are set through a clear, formal, multi-agency process ESMF spans the often artificial bounds of modeling efforts within agencies, efforts across agencies, and weather and climate time scales