Numerical climate 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 study the dynamics of the climate system and to make projections of future climate and of climate change. Climate models can also be qualitative models and contain narratives, largely descriptive, of possible futures.
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 various energy sources. These equations are the basis for computer programs used to simulate the Earth's atmosphere or oceans. Atmospheric and oceanic GCMs are key components along with sea ice and land-surface components.
The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a program of NASA comprising a series of artificial satellite missions and scientific instruments in Earth orbit designed for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans. Since the early 1970s, NASA has been developing its Earth Observing System, launching a series of Landsat satellites in the decade. Some of the first included passive microwave imaging in 1972 through the Nimbus 5 satellite. Following the launch of various satellite missions, the conception of the program began in the late 1980s and expanded rapidly through the 1990s. Since the inception of the program, it has continued to develop, including; land, sea, radiation and atmosphere. Collected in a system known as EOSDIS, NASA uses this data in order to study the progression and changes in the biosphere of Earth. The main focus of this data collection surrounds climatic science. The program is the centrepiece of NASA's Earth Science Enterprise.
The Community Climate System Model (CCSM) is a coupled general circulation model (GCM) developed by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DoE), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The coupled components include an atmospheric model, a land-surface model, an ocean model, and a sea ice model. CCSM is maintained by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) is a research institute that is sponsored jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) and the University of Colorado Boulder (CU). CIRES scientists study the Earth system, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, and communicate these findings to decision makers, the scientific community, and the public.
Fedora is a digital asset management (DAM) content repository architecture upon which institutional repositories, digital archives, and digital library systems might be built. Fedora is the underlying architecture for a digital repository, and is not a complete management, indexing, discovery, and delivery application. It is a modular architecture built on the principle that interoperability and extensibility are best achieved by the integration of data, interfaces, and mechanisms as clearly defined modules.
Isearch is open-source text retrieval software first developed in 1994 by Nassib Nassar as part of the Isite Z39.50 information framework. The project started at the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) of the North Carolina supercomputing center MCNC and funded by the National Science Foundation to follow in the track of WAIS and develop prototype systems for distributed information networks encompassing Internet applications, library catalogs and other information resources.
The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a key core capability in NASA's Earth Science Data Systems Program. Designed and maintained by Raytheon Intelligence & Space, it is a comprehensive data and information system designed to perform a wide variety of functions in support of a heterogeneous national and international user community.
Digital Earth is the name given to a concept by former US vice president Al Gore in 1998, describing a virtual representation of the Earth that is georeferenced and connected to the world's digital knowledge archives.
Geospatial metadata is a type of metadata applicable to geographic data and information. Such objects may be stored in a geographic information system (GIS) or may simply be documents, data-sets, images or other objects, services, or related items that exist in some other native environment but whose features may be appropriate to describe in a (geographic) metadata catalog.
The Handle System is the Corporation for National Research Initiatives's proprietary registry assigning persistent identifiers, or handles, to information resources, and for resolving "those handles into the information necessary to locate, access, and otherwise make use of the resources".
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 and weather domain, where software components representing distinct physical domains 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, that transfers data between different components. An additional challenge is that these models generally require supercomputers 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.
The Common Metadata for Climate Modelling Digital Repositories, or METAFOR project, is creating a Common Information Model (CIM) for climate data and the models that produce it.
The National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) is a collaboration of modeling centers. The group is currently developing a new ensemble forecasting system for operational numerical weather prediction.
The Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata conventions are conventions for the description of Earth sciences data, intended to promote the processing and sharing of data files. The metadata defined by the CF conventions are generally included in the same file as the data, thus making the file "self-describing". The conventions provide a definitive description of what the data values found in each netCDF variable represent, and of the spatial and temporal properties of the data, including information about grids, such as grid cell bounds and cell averaging methods. This enables users of files from different sources to decide which variables are comparable, and is a basis for building software applications with powerful data extraction, grid remapping, data analysis, and data visualization capabilities.
The NOAA National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS) is a Web-services based project providing both real-time and retrospective format independent access to climate and weather model data.
Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) is a free-surface, terrain-following, primitive equations ocean model widely used by the scientific community for a diverse range of applications. The model is developed and supported by researchers at the Rutgers University, University of California Los Angeles and contributors worldwide.
The Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) is an integrated Earth system model and data assimilation system developed at the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The components of the model use the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF), enabling them to be connected in a flexible manner and supporting the investigation of many different aspects of Earth science, in particular questions related to coupled processes involving the atmosphere, ocean, and/or land. Uses of GEOS span a range of spatiotemporal scales and include the representation of dynamical, physical, chemical and biological processes.
A common data model (CDM) can refer to any standardised data model which allows for data and information exchange between different applications and data sources. Common data models aim to standardise logical infrastructure so that related applications can "operate on and share the same data", and can be seen as a way to "organize data from many sources that are in different formats into a standard structure".
