Eric Guilyardi (LOCEAN/IPSL and Univ. Reading) and the Metafor team Common Metadata for Climate Modelling Digital Repositories IS-ENES kick-off meeting Paris, March 2009

Outline What is Metafor What we want to do – objectives How we are doing it What we have done – Standards development – “Common Information Model” (CIM) – Controlled vocabulary What we are planning to do – CMIP5 metadata Links with IS-ENES

Where Metafor came from PRISM project (FP ), ENES PRISM Sustained Initiative (PSI) – Code coupling and I/O – Integration and modelling environments – Data processing and management – Meta-data standards (key !) – Computing issues Metafor IS-ENES IS-ENES, Metafor ENES coordination

Facts and Figures 11 partners EU contribution of 2.2M€ Started March 2008, duration 3 years NCAS, University of Reading, UK (Coordinator) BADC, Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK CERFACS, France Models and Data, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace, CNRS, France University of Manchester, UK Met Office, UK Administratia Nationala de Meterologie, Romania Météo France, CNRM, France CLIMPACT, France CICS, Princeton University, USA INFRA Scientific Digital Repositories

Metafor objectives Create a standard metadata Common Information Model (CIM) to describe climate data and the models and experiments that produced those data Allows essential data, model and experiment distinctions to be understood Builds on existing metadata standards used internationally in climate (CF, CDML, CSML, Curator, NMM, FLUME, etc.) Uses existing format and framework (XML, RDF, etc.)

Metafor objectives Develop, deploy, and evaluate a prototype infrastructure that will allow key data and models to be discovered and compared between distributed digital repositories single sign-on services to populate and manipulate, the CIM metadata services exploit NDG CSML to provide a common Geographic Markup Language interface to climate data centralized CIM content harvested from individual repositories using OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).

Metafor Work plan Metafor activities and work packages (WP) map onto the I3 structure. Project management, training and dissemination are organised in WP1 and WP7.

Metafor standards activity Aim - metadata encompassing the entire modelling process Guiding Principles for metadata integration of existing standards (ISO, climate modeling community,...) flexibility to support emerging standards both from within Metafor as well as from the broad community maintaining the “separation of concerns” (modularity) providing clear governance policies

CIM development strategy Describe climate data and the models and experiments that produce it: Premise : Domain analysis is captured in a formal model preceding, and driving as much as possible, implementations Argument : Analysis can be done at the right level of abstraction Applications derived from a conceptual view are more robust than software developed directly on a specific technology Platform independent representation supports multiple platforms Revisions flow through to all platforms automatically Goal : One normative artifact – the UML model Derived XSD generated automatically

Conceptual Model Climate Modelling An activity using a software to produce data to be archived in a repository. UML Application Model Application Model XSD RDF PCMDI XML An essential aim of Metafor is that the conceptual model is not changed by the manner in which it is used or applied. IPSL BADC e.g. CIM e.g. CMIP5

CIM v1.0 schematic view Software pkg Grids pkg Data pkg Activity pkg CIM v 1.0 available on the Metafor website at:

Using the CIM to support CMIP5 The CMIP5 experimental archives will be ~500TB of model run data We need to be able to capture all the details of these experiments (and the component models and platforms used) to allow users of the archive to differentiate between the experiments and the models. To do this, Metafor has been tasked by WGCM/CMIP to produce a questionnaire to capture the model metadata.

Controlled vocabulary for “activity/numerical experiment”

Controlled vocabulary for “activity/boundary condition and forcing” + flow of specifications

Controlled Vocabulary for Software

Current work: CMIP5 questionnaire Target date: July 09 Intensive community testing planned

 Projects coordinated from the design stage via ENES  Metafor will support use of CIM by IS-ENES  IS-ENES will promote use of CIM and use/support CIM tools developed in Metafor (SA2, JRA1, JRA4)  Strong links via many common PIs (and advisory board)  2 years in common IS-ENES & METAFOR Metafor IS-ENES

Metafor highlights after one year CIM development strategy proposed, including conceptual level and meta-model CIM v1.0 delivered, freely available at Strong international collaboration and links established with USA colleagues in Curator/ESG/PCMDI Leading the CMIP5 metadata collection Very active group of experts and inclusive mail list (~100/month) Community buy-in growing – future wide-range dissemination planned to tie in with CMIP5 questionnaire and AR5

The open standard developed in Metafor will play a catalytic role in the way next generation climate data repositories, such as IPCC AR5, are organised, preserved and accessed. More on:

Project structure EC WP2 (Univ. Reading) Project Coordinator (Univ. Reading) Project Manager WP6 (MPI-M M&D) WP4(BADC) WP5 (Met Office) WP3(IPSL) SME interactions and dissemination activities Project Executive Scientific and Technical Advisory Board ESM community Metafor Partners PCMDIESGCurator Project Executive Scientific and Technical Advisory Board

Metafor standards definition International EmergingCommunity Discovery metadata ISO ISO Climate Modelling gridspec - model discretisation Sensor ML - observations NMM - model description CERA2 - data management Data CF for netcdf Metafor will coordinate the filling of the metadata gaps, mapping to different standards, aggregating the metadata and, if necessary, creating new standards. MetadataStandardsMetadataStandards