Earth System Modeling Framework Team Introduces Prototype Software

	Animated demonstration of a multi-component fluid flow application built using ESMF Version 1.0. Click on the image to start an animation.

On Thursday, May 15 at Princeton University, NASA-funded developers introduced the prototype Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF), software that will allow weather and climate models from different researchers to operate together on parallel supercomputers. A demonstration of ESMF Version 1.0 was a highlight of the Second ESMF Community Meeting, which attracted an international audience of 120 climate modelers, software developers and agency managers.

The ESMF is a national-scale collaboration involving NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, and academia. The NASA Earth Science Technology Office's Computational Technologies Project is funding the ESMF with $10 million dollars over three years.

"The ESMF will provide the nation with an unprecedented framework that enables modeling the weather and climate system at multiple time-scales and provides a seamless transition from research to operation environments," said Tsengdar Lee, information systems specialist and acting manager for the Global Modeling and Assimilation Program, NASA Office of Earth Science. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) participates in the ESMF through its NASA Seasonal through Interannual Prediction Project (NSIPP), Data Assimilation Office (DAO), and Earth and Space Data Computing Division.

"This is not a research project," stressed Cecelia DeLuca, manager of the ESMF core implementation team at NSF's National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. "We want to support the community at the production level." By the January 2005 software release, the goal is for any institution to be able to use the ESMF for coupling atmosphere, ocean, and land models as well as data assimilation systems.

ESMF Version 1.0 contains enough of the planned capabilities for completing the initial set of "interoperability experiments" later this year. These experiments will create three entirely new coupled climate modeling systems by pairing for the first time models from NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from NCAR and NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, and from NSIPP and the DAO. "High-resolution seasonal forecasting is one example of new science that could result by combining modeling techniques from the nation's leading climate research centers," said V. Balaji, chief ESMF developer at GFDL.

More information about the ESMF, including the prototype software and forms to solicit research community input, are available at: http://www.esmf.ucar.edu