Geosciences - Observations (Bob Wilhelmson)

• The geosciences in NSF’s world consists of atmospheric science, ocean science, and earth science

• Many of the problems being investigated have major societal impacts • earthquakes and volcanic eruption impact on human oives• global change and impacts water availability, crop production,

regional weather),• weather including severe storms, huricane)• ocean/sea ice response to global temperature changes

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20,2010)

Geo Events Affect Us!

Geosciences – Observatories - Context

There are many large observation efforts within the geo community. They often share similar needs but less often use common CI software to meet those needs.

• NSF Supported• Arctic Observing Network (AON)

• Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI)

• National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)

• The Waters Network

• The Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network

• The Geosciences Network (GEON)

• Earthscope/Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)

• Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO)

• Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD)

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20,2010)

Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) • OOI is designed to be a leading-edge, multi-scalar CI that creates an interactive

ocean laboratory

• Key Concerns/Issues (provided by Matt Arrott)• Real-time global distribution of science data and metadata; • Coupling of observation networks with data assimilation/numerical modeling systems; • Manage real-time event detection and response; • Facilitate multi-institutional interactive research experiments; • Operate for 30 years across multiple domains of authority over a federated resource

base at a national scale with the intent to collaborate globally.

• Core Technical Challenges (provided by Matt Arrott)• Real-time global connectivity to distribute science data ranging from 10 to 109 bps; • Demand-driven distribution of application specific functionality to targeted locations in the

network; • Demand-driven scaling of the system at a component and location level of concern; • Continuous operations in the presence of failures; • Secure operations across multiple authority domains; • Technological evolution of the infrastructure over a 30 year operational life cycle.

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20, 2010)

Climate and Weather

• The challenge is to model changes in the earth’s climate and associated impact on average regional weather changes over decades and centuries

• Issues• Is this even possible? Increasing model resolution by only a factor of 2

requires up to 256 times more computation and produces 64 times more data and increased code scalability

• Is it possible to adequately evaluate model predicted behavior with past observational data at increased resolution?

• How much should we expect if we believe that today’s global models have “large systematic errors in critical parts of the global climate system and severely underestimate the variability of weather and climate, missing the extremes that have the largest impact on human society and natural ecosystems.”

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20, 2010)

Climate and Weather

• Despite uncertainties, coupled global and regional modeling will received increased attention during the next 10 years

• Efforts to develop scalable 1 km resolution global models are currently underway

• Data management and analysis will need to be enhanced

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20, 2010)

Earthquake Prediction

• The earthquake community will soon be ready to make earthquake predictions rather than just responding to the occurrence of earthquakes

• Phil Maechling from SCEC (Southern California Earthquake Center) noted in a presentation last month thtat the challenges to accomplish this include:• Automation of simulations using workflows for coupling models

and carrying out simulations on multiple remote systems• Storage, analysis, and management of millions of data files• Technology is complex and evolving and it takes significant

personnel to build and maintain basic computing infrastructure

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20, 2010)

Reports

• CI needs have been documented in a number of reports, many of which were completed in the first half of this decade.

NCSA Strategic Planning Presentation (April 20,2010)

Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (2009)

Key research requirements: • Continue and improve data collection and observations of hazard-related processes. • Develop and improve forecasting models and visualization techniques to provide timely and accurate information on the occurrence of hazardous events, consequences, and immediate steps that should be taken to reduce impacts. • Improve methods for validating these models.• Encourage investment in developing, modeling and monitoring impacts of cost effective and beneficial mitigation technologies.

National Science and Technology Council: Grand Challenges for DR (2005)

Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences:

• Adaptive coordination of results of predictive models with

experimental observations

Science and Engineering Grand Challenges using IT (2003)

Overarching Recommendation:

Establish a Petascale Collaboratory for the Geosciences with the mission to provide leadership-class computational resources that will make it possible to address, and minimize the time to solution of, the most challenging problems facing the geosciences.

Proposal to Develop Petascale Computing Facility for Geosciences (2005)