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Common modeling infrastructure refers to software libraries that can be shared across multiple institutions in order to increase software reuse and interoperability in complex modeling systems. Early initiatives were in the
climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteoro ...
and
weather Weather is the state of the atmosphere, describing for example the degree to which it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloud cover, cloudy. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmo ...
domain, where
software component A software component is a modular unit of software that encapsulates specific functionality. The desired characteristics of a component are reusability and maintainability. Value Components allow software development to assemble software ...
s representing distinct physical domains (for example,
ocean The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as ''oceans'' (the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Indian, Southern Ocean ...
or
atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...
) tended to be developed by domain specialists, often at different organizations. In order to create complete applications, these needed to be combined, using for instance a
general circulation model A general circulation model (GCM) is a type of climate model. It employs a mathematical model of the general circulation of a planetary atmosphere or ocean. It uses the Navier–Stokes equations on a rotating sphere with thermodynamic terms for ...
, that transfers data between different components. An additional challenge is that these models generally require
supercomputers A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instru ...
to run, to account for the collected data and for data analyses. Thus, it was important to provide an efficient massively parallel computer system, and the processing hardware and software, to account for all the different workloads and communication channels.


General

Common modeling infrastructure projects include the Network Common Data Form (
NetCDF NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) is a set of software libraries and self-describing, machine-independent data formats that support the creation, access, and sharing of array-oriented scientific data. The project homepage is hosted by the Unidat ...
) library, the Spherical Coordinate Remapping and Interpolation Package (SCRIP), the Flexible Modeling System (FMS), the OASIS coupler developed at CERFACS, and the multi-agency Earth System Modeling Framework (
ESMF The Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) is open-source software for building Climate model, climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science software applications. These applications are computationally demandi ...
). The
Earth System Modeling Framework The Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) is open-source software for building climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science software applications. These applications are computationally demanding and usually ...
(ESMF) is considered a technical layer, integrated into a common modeling infrastructure. Other aspects of interoperability and shared infrastructure include: common experimental protocols, common analytic methods, common documentation standards for data and data
provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...
, shared workflow, and shared model components.


History

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a series of journal papers and government reports described common modeling infrastructure as necessary to the competitiveness and evolution of the U.S. Earth science modeling community. These reports resulted in a number of new community projects. Th
Earth System Modeling Framework
(
ESMF The Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) is open-source software for building Climate model, climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science software applications. These applications are computationally demandi ...
) and th
Earth System Modeling
(ESM) are two of the largest modeling approaches. Similar projects were initiated in related domains, including th
Space Weather Modeling Framework
(SWMF/CESM), to study conditions including the Sun, solar wind, magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere that potentially can influence performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems or can endanger human life or health.


See also

*
Climate model Numerical climate models (or climate system models) are mathematical models that can simulate the interactions of important drivers of climate. These drivers are the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. Scientists use climate models to st ...
*
Earth System Modeling Framework The Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) is open-source software for building climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science software applications. These applications are computationally demanding and usually ...


References

{{Computer modeling Computer libraries Numerical climate and weather models