Efficient Handling of Climate Data
Bernd Fritzsch · Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar-und Meeresforschung (Alfred-Wegener-Institut) · 2009
Scientists in Earth System Sciences produce huge data streams, which are stored in distributed data archives. One important data stream comes from simulations. Earth System modelers are working at the edge of high performance computing by running their complex models with increasing resolution, higher number of resolved processes and in a coupled mode to describe the interactions between the components. This produces an increasing amount of output data. On the other hand, the extent of observational data also rises. Monitoring the earth with satellites and huge measurement campaigns are examples for this kind of data sources.The different provenance causes broad heterogeneity of data concerning formats, description, and access modes. This often makes interconnections of different data sets cumbersome for the scientists and hinders interinstitutional collaborations in evaluating and reusing datasets. C3Grid offers an infrastructure to overcome these problems. It is based on components which were developed and implemented during a project “Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid – C3Grid”, funded by the BMBF within the German D-Grid Initiative and uses grid technologies to bring distributed data archives under a common umbrella. Detailed information about the project, the participating institutions and staff can be found at