Massive virtual climate data laboratory to be built by NCI

July 27, 2018

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) will lead a major new NCRIS-supported research infrastructure project to allow Australian researchers and policy makers to analyse the next generation of international climate data.

The Climate Science Data Enhanced Virtual Laboratory (Climate DEVL) project will bring together international reference datasets and observations in a virtual environment linked to Australia’s fastest supercomputer.

NCRISIn particular, the Climate DEVL will enable Australia to import the World Climate Research Programme’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data, which will be a key component of Australia’s contribution to international climate modelling efforts in the lead up to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s forthcoming 6th Assessment Report.

This Report informs global climate agreements and their implementation (such as the Paris Agreement), as well as providing climate forecast information to government, business, agriculture and industry.

NCI is the only centre in Australia that has the computational capability and expertise to support the massive collaborative activities in computation and data science required for research across climate, weather, earth systems and observations for Australia.

NCI Associate Director Dr Ben Evans said the Climate DEVL would involve augmenting and deepening NCI’s current world-leading data platform to be ready in time for the deluge of CMIP6 data.

“The CMIP6 dataset will be the largest collection of climate data ever produced,” Dr Evans said.

“The Climate DEVL makes this data accessible and analysable for Australian researchers. As the large scientifically-rich climate model datasets are released from the US, Europe, UK, Asia and Australia, they need to be immediately synchronised and made available for use with our other datasets.“

By embedding the Climate DEVL within NCI’s national peak data-intensive computing infrastructure, the research community will have access to state-of-the-science software tools and techniques in an environment where they can quickly and confidently analyse the data and share it with other research activities undertaken at the NCI.

Dr Helen Cleugh from the CSIRO Climate Science Centre said the Climate DEVL will play a pivotal role in the development of future climate projections research.

“This new Virtual Laboratory will provide essential infrastructure, services and expertise to support our research,” Dr Cleugh said.

“The Climate DEVL will underpin our mission of building resilience and preparedness in the Australian region by providing transformative climate information.”

The project is supported by $425,000 from the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy ANDS, Nectar and RDS projects, which builds on $470,000 co-investment by the project partners.

The organisations partnering with NCI in developing the Climate DEVL are: