3. The CCSM Data User Community

1.User Community Identification

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

• Scientists at universities, federal laboratories and NCAR.
• CCSM developers at universities, NCAR and national laboratories
• CCSM working groups performing production integrations
• CCSM working groups performing development integrations
• Impact analysts
• The National Assessment program
• The IPCC Data Distribution Center
• CMIP/PMIP
• Policy makers
• Other modelling groups using CCSM data as forcing input to their models (e.g. regional climate models)
• Industry
• 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.
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  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 CCSM2/CSM1.4 can be used to infer user requirements.
  The user requirements can be solicited via a data survey. (L. Buja
  has a rought draft of this)? The data survey will provide a mechanism for the user to address data needs as well as an opportunity to participate in the process of selecting how and what data are
  made available.

A large segment of the data user community are members of the CCSM
working groups. What is the definition of a working group member? What are the privledges associated with a working group member?
The interface between the user community and the CCSM core group is the CCSM working group liason.
What is the "data" responsiblity of a CCSM liason? The liason is responsible for answering data-related questions such as what data are availabe and instructions on how to access the data. Most working group members have access to the MSS (true?), so the data access may be as simple as providing a MSS pathname. For non-working group members, data access can be more problematic. Methods such as
scp, sftp, or copying the data to tape require more effort. The liason can evaulate these situations on a case by case basis and decide the most effienct method to deliver the data.

Recommendation:
The CDMG should conduct a focused survey of the different categories
of CCSM data users to discover the community needs and requirements.
Implement Buja's survey

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