Virtual Laboratories: Vision for an Earth Sciences Collaborative And Distributed Environment

Abstract

With the advent of IPCC reports, Earth Sciences in general, and Climate Sciences in particular, have become an invaluable tool for policy makers. With advances in technologies, both in computation power and in storage capabilities, the amount of data available to scientists and policy makers is ever increasing. As a result, it has become nearly impossible for a scientific group (institution), to hold all the necessary data for a study at a single computer (facility). On one hand the Earth Science Grid Federation (ESGF) project solves the data distribution, on another hand the Climate Data Analysis Tools software offers advanced tools for earth science data analysis. “Virtual Laboratories” aim at combining both projects (non-exclusively) to allow scientists and policy makers to work in a remote and distributed environment.

Outline

Historical Notes: PCMDI

MIPs

AMIP and the lost data

AMIP2

Many MIPs

CDAT

Overview

Numpy, cdms2, vcs, and utils...

Others Python Packages? Distribution? Conda!

Earth System Grid Federation

Distributed Data

Authentication

Compute Team

APIs

Backends

Fusing the Projects: Virtual Laboratory