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Earth System Modeling Framework
The Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) is open-source software for building climate, numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, and other Earth science software applications. These applications are computationally demanding and usually run on supercomputers. The ESMF is considered a technical layer, integrated into a sophisticated common modeling infrastructure for interoperability. Other aspects of interoperability and shared infrastructure include: common experimental protocols, common analytic methods, common documentation standards for data and data provenance, shared workflow, and shared model components. The ESMF project is distinguished by its strong emphasis on community governance and distributed development, and by a diverse customer base that includes modeling groups from universities, major U.S. research centers, the National Weather Service, the Department of Defense, and NASA. The ESMF development team was centered at NCAR until 2009, after which it moved ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open-source Software
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software. Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2008 report by the Standish Group stated that adoption of open-source software models has resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year for consumers. Open source code can be used for studying and allows capable end users to adapt software to their personal needs in a similar way user scripts an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program.Selling Free Software (gnu.org) Computer programs are deemed "free" if they give end-users (not just the developer) ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices. The right to study and modify a computer program entails that |
Common Modeling Infrastructure
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 (for example, ocean or atmosphere) 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. General Common modeling infrastructure projects includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
METAFOR
The Common Metadata for Climate Modelling Digital Repositories, or METAFOR project, is creating a Common Information Model (computing), Common Information Model (CIM) for climate data and the models that produce it. The CIM aims to describe climate data and the models that produce it in a standard way, and to address the fragmentation and gaps in availability of metadata (data describing data) as well as duplication of information collection and problems of identifying, accessing or using climate data that are currently found in existing repositories. A further aim of the METAFOR project is to ensure the wide adoption of the CIM. METAFOR is optimizing the way climate data infrastructures are used to store knowledge, thereby adding value to primary research data and information, and providing an essential asset for the numerous stakeholders actively engaged in climate change issues (policy, research, impacts, mitigation, private sector). METAFOR has created tools for practical use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Climate And Forecast Metadata Conventions
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. History and evolution The CF conventions were introduced in 2003, after several years of development by a collaboration that included staff from U.S. and European climate and weather ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive information about a resource. It is used for discovery and identification. It includes elements such as title, abstract, author, and keywords. * Structural metadata – metadata about containers of data and indicates how compound objects are put together, for example, how pages are ordered to form chapters. It describes the types, versions, relationships, and other characteristics of digital materials. * Administrative metadata – the information to help manage a resource, like resource type, permissions, and when and how it was created. * Reference metadata – the information about the contents and quality of statistical data. * Statistical metadata – also called process data, may describe processes that collect, process, or produce st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bilinear Interpolation
In mathematics, bilinear interpolation is a method for interpolating functions of two variables (e.g., ''x'' and ''y'') using repeated linear interpolation. It is usually applied to functions sampled on a 2D rectilinear grid, though it can be generalized to functions defined on the vertices of (a mesh of) arbitrary convex quadrilaterals. Bilinear interpolation is performed using linear interpolation first in one direction, and then again in the other direction. Although each step is linear in the sampled values and in the position, the interpolation as a whole is not linear but rather quadratic in the sample location. Bilinear interpolation is one of the basic resampling techniques in computer vision and image processing, where it is also called bilinear filtering or bilinear texture mapping. Computation Suppose that we want to find the value of the unknown function ''f'' at the point (''x'', ''y''). It is assumed that we know the value of ''f'' at the four points ''Q''11 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Object
In computer science, an object can be a variable, a data structure, a function, or a method. As regions of memory, they contain value and are referenced by identifiers. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, ''object'' can be a combination of variables, functions, and data structures; in particular in class-based variations of the paradigm it refers to a particular instance of a class. In the relational model of database management, an object can be a table or column, or an association between data and a database entity (such as relating a person's age to a specific person). Object-based languages An important distinction in programming languages is the difference between an object-oriented language and an object-based language. A language is usually considered object-based if it includes the basic capabilities for an object: identity, properties, and attributes. A language is considered object-oriented if it is object-based and also has the capability of polymorphi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediator Pattern
In software engineering, the mediator pattern defines an object that encapsulates how a set of objects interact. This pattern is considered to be a behavioral pattern due to the way it can alter the program's running behavior. In object-oriented programming, programs often consist of many classes. Business logic and computation are distributed among these classes. However, as more classes are added to a program, especially during maintenance and/or refactoring, the problem of communication between these classes may become more complex. This makes the program harder to read and maintain. Furthermore, it can become difficult to change the program, since any change may affect code in several other classes. With the mediator pattern, communication between objects is encapsulated within a mediator object. Objects no longer communicate directly with each other, but instead communicate through the mediator. This reduces the dependencies between communicating objects, thereby reducing co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Radiation
Solar irradiance is the power per unit area (surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre (W/m2) in SI units. Solar irradiance is often integrated over a given time period in order to report the radiant energy emitted into the surrounding environment (joule per square metre, J/m2) during that time period. This integrated solar irradiance is called solar irradiation, solar exposure, solar insolation, or insolation. Irradiance may be measured in space or at the Earth's surface after atmospheric absorption and scattering. Irradiance in space is a function of distance from the Sun, the solar cycle, and cross-cycle changes.Michael Boxwell, ''Solar Electricity Handbook: A Simple, Practical Guide to Solar Energy'' (2012), p. 41–42. Irradiance on the Earth's surface additionally depends on the tilt of the measuring surface, the height ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cryosphere
] The cryosphere (from the Ancient Greek, Greek ''kryos'', "cold", "frost" or "ice" and ''sphaira'', "globe, ball") is an all-encompassing term for those portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground (which includes permafrost). Thus, there is a wide overlap with the hydrosphere. The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system with important linkages and feedbacks generated through its influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Through these feedback processes, the cryosphere plays a significant role in the global climate and in climate model response to global changes. Approximately 10% of the Earth's surface is covered by ice, but this is rapidly decreasing. The term '' deglaciation'' describes the retreat of cryospheric features. Cryology is the study of cryospheres. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atmosphere
An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosphere is the outer region of a star, which includes the layers above the opaque photosphere; stars of low temperature might have outer atmospheres containing compound molecules. The atmosphere of Earth is composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (0.9%), carbon dioxide (0.04%) and trace gases. Most organisms use oxygen for respiration; lightning and bacteria perform nitrogen fixation to produce ammonia that is used to make nucleotides and amino acids; plants, algae, and cyanobacteria use carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. The layered composition of the atmosphere minimises the harmful effects of sunlight, ultraviolet radiation, the solar wind, and cosmic rays to protect organisms from genetic damage. The current comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
