1. Introduction
The primary goal of the CCSM project is the development and continuous
improvement of a comprehensive climate modelling system to be used to
understand and predict the behavior of the Earth's climate system. The CCSM
project focuses the efforts of a large scientific community to develop and
maintain a stable scientific modeling environment and to provide large climate
datasets to the US research and climate assessment community. CCSM data
products must be visible and easily accessible to these communities for the
CCSM project to be effective.
The Climate System Model version 1 (CSM1) coupled together distinct models
simulating each of the four major processes of the Earth's climate systems:
atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice and the land surface. Each of these models had been
developed separately within their respective scientific communities and the
resulting output datastreams tended to be very different from each other. The
need to easily intercompare data from the various components of the CSM1 runs
provided the motivation to unify the formats and metadata conventions of the
output data. The sole CSM1 data archive was the NCAR Mass Storage System, with
modest amounts of popular CSM1 data being mirrored on public CGD web servers.
The primary audience for CSM1 data products was a broad, university-based,
research community.
In the same time period, the Parallel Climate Model (PCM) project developed and
applied a similar coupled climate model for DOE climate assessment and
prediction studies. PCM's tight focus on performance portability and the
ability to tap into existing DOE data management systems made PCM a very
effective climate modeling application.
Recently the CSM and PCM projects were merged. The title "Community" was added
to the project name to reflect the project's broader, interagency, scope. In
this new environment which spans NSF, DOE and NASA, the data management and
integration needs for CCSM and PCM have evolved as well.
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