NCAR Infrastructure Support for EaSM Projects
This enhanced Infrastructure Support, sponsored by NSF, includes non-computational resources from the NCAR Earth System Laboratory (NESL) and the Computational Information Systems Laboratory (CISL). The support effort is described at http://www2.cisl.ucar.edu/easm-support.
To take advantage of these targeted support opportunities, EaSM PIs and collaborators should contact easmhelp@ucar.edu or 303-497-2400. To ensure that EaSM awardees receive maximum value from these efforts, please include your EaSM award number in your email request or identify yourself as an EaSM awardee with your agency award number when calling.
The specific areas of this support are:
1. Response to help requests, including prioritization, routing of requests to the appropriate staff resources, and follow up to ensure successful resolution of the problem. Help is available from CISL's HPC consultants as well as the CESM and WRF computing groups.
2. Support to enable ports of our released community codes to computational platforms outside of NCAR. EaSM home institutions and of EaSM collaborator code to NCAR community models. This support may include initial testing (e.g. restarts, error growth), and assistance in model validation.
3. Data distribution and management of climate model output and climate data sets derived from a set of global model output data that will be maintained as part of the Research Data Archive (RDA). Initially, the scalable data system will offer access to the 3-D atmospheric, 6-hourly, CESM output parameters from the 20th century run (1850-2005) and four concomitant RCP (representative concentration pathway) future scenarios spanning 2005-2100. Ultimately, a web portal will make it easy to select time, space, and parameters that provide boundary conditions suitable for regional modeling studies.
4. Hands-on and on-line training in the use and development of NCAR community models such as CESM and WRF. CISL, CESM and WRF expertise and resources will be combined to produce formal tutorials and training delivered via online modules, live web-casts, and hands-on tutorials held both at NCAR and at remote venues.
5. Regular software releases that will include documentation, new additions to “scientifically supported” model functionality and associated out-of-the-box experiments, data from standard control runs, and improved ease-of-use based on user feedback. Solutions to problems found as part of this support effort will be incorporated into the releases. Where scientifically appropriate, new code functionality that emerges from EaSM projects would also be folded back into the releases.
Efficient and fair delivery of the above NCAR support to the EaSM community may require NCAR staff to prioritize requests. At least initially, first priority will go to immediate/urgent needs, and preferentially to EaSM projects with no NCAR collaborators, and hence no alternative recourse. Second priority will be longer-term needs, again preferentially to EaSM projects with no NCAR collaborators.
Please contact easmhelp@ucar.edu with any questions. We look forward to helping you achieve your research objectives.
