3. The CCSM Data User Community

1.User Community Identification

Users of CCSM data span a wide range of interests. In many cases, these users
will have unique data requirements. An incomplete list includes:

• CCSM Scientists at participating universities, federal laboratories ORNL, NERSC etc) and NCAR.
• CCSM developers
• CCSM production groups performing integrations
• Impact analysts
• The National Assessment program
• The IPCC Data Distribution Center
• CMIP
• Policy makers
• Other modelling groups using CCSM data as forcing input to their odels (regional modelling, for example)
• Others
  The activities of this set of users can be combined into a reasonably small
  set of common activities - access to the data, diagnostics of CCSM performance
  (scientifically and computationally), and various types of analysis. A goal
  of the CCSM Data Management Plan is to meet the needs of these users so that
  these activities can be accomplished reasonably easily and efficiently.

2.User Requirements

What are the requirements of the users?
While many of the requirements of the users are known from past experiments,
these requirements not formally documented. It is possible that previous data
usage from CSM1 can be used to infer user requirements. The addition of DOE
funded climate change researchers within the Climate Change Working Group
brings an additional set of requirements.
How should user's requirements be solicited? In November 2001 the SSC
requested that more information concerning the weekly CCSM scientists
discussions be made available to the community. The avenue which was suggested
was to have the core CCSM staff provide expanded web diagnostics of current
integrations. This is one way the users can make their requirements known, but
does it always have to come through the SSC? The answer is probably no, but
then what is the procedure by which users can make their requirements known.
It is expected that both the Paleoclimate and Climate Change Groups in CGD be
prominent CCSM data producers and users, and represent a large CCSM user
community.
Recommendation:
The CDMG should conduct a focused survey of the different categories
of CCSM data users to discover the community needs and requirements.
As soon as possible, the CDMG should solicit and collect user requirements
from each of the CCSM Working Groups. An initial version of this survey
was created by Buja in late 2002.
Recommendation:
One member from each of the Paleoclimate, Climate Change and Climate
Variability Groups be appointed to the CCSM data management group.

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