A Climate Model Intercomparison Data Analysis experiment in the CMIP5 context

Authors

S. Fiore¹, M. Plociennik², G. Donvito³, M. Owsiak², M. Fargetta³, R. Barbera³, R. Bruno³, M. David⁴, E. Giorgio³, D. N. Williams⁵, and G. Aloisio^1,6

¹CMCC Foundation, ²PSNC, ³INFN,
⁴LIP, ⁵LLNL, ⁶UniSalento

Abstract

One of the case studies faced by the INDIGO project relates to the climate model intercomparison data analysis. The case study, led by CMCC, relates to the European Network for Earth System modelling (ENES) scientific community. The case study is very challenging, as it involves large amount of distributed data (multi-terabyte order) from multiple climate models simulations. In such a context, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) provides a federated data infrastructure that has been serving the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) experiment, providing access to 2.5PB of data for the IPCC AR5. The proposed case study deals with multiple challenges and requirements regarding: workflow management, big data analytics, distributed systems, data visualization, interoperability with the community eco-system, re-usability, performance as well as, dynamic and flexible use of infrastructural resources. The solution proposed by INDIGO allows addressing these requirements and overcoming current limitations regarding client-side and sequential data analysis, static approaches for services management, and lack of workflow support and domain-oriented big data frameworks to enable large scale, high performance climate data analysis experiments. The talk will highlight the current status of the use case and how the adoption of the INDIGO PaaS can help supporting the scientific community working in this domain.