Cloud for climate: A Collaboration Between SilverLining, Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, And The National Center For Atmospheric Research
Climate modeling is among the most computing-intensive activities in all of science. Today, nearly all full production climate model simulations are run in government supercomputing facilities, limiting both capacity and access for researchers everywhere, and most significantly in the Global South. This slows climate science and prevents stakeholders in vulnerable areas from engaging equitably in research and decision-making.
COP26: SilverLining Executive Director Kelly Wanser joins Ana Pinheiro Privette of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) on stage and Jean-Francois Lamarque of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Chris Lennard of the Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG) at the University of Cape Town on-screen during COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
In collaboration with Amazon Sustainable Data Initiative (ASDI) and the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), SilverLining is supporting a groundbreaking study of near-term climate that includes deployment of the first-ever full production climate model simulations on the cloud as part of our Safe Climate Research Initiative. The program includes one of the most sophisticated and valuable implementations of a global climate model to be undertaken on the cloud, opening a powerful new way to accelerate climate research and democratize access to tools and information for climate research.
Using ASDI-donated AWS cloud resources, technical support, and access to the vast infrastructure and fast networking provided by AWS scalable high performance computing (HPC) solutions, NCAR will run an ensemble of 30 model simulations of the Earth system over the period from 2035-2070 under a median scenario for warming and with simulations that include intervention in the stratosphere the stratosphere to cool climate. The model simulations will be replicated by the UK Meteorological Office and the resulting datasets will be hosted in the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), providing open access for researchers around the world.
Collaborating research teams will use the data generated through these simulations to study impacts on Earth and human systems—including agriculture, drought, flooding, and human health—in various parts of the world. These studies will advance understanding of near-term climate and climate-intervention responses, accelerating progress on a critical problem for humanity. Over time, the team behind this work plans to make many of the world's top global climate models, and related datasets, available to researchers around the world as user-friendly services on the cloud.
Among the first consumers of simulation data in the effort are high-caliber researchers from countries in the Global South, through a program in partnership with The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and funded in part by SilverLining.
Cloud access to climate models and datasets "has huge potential to capacitate developing nation scientists to actually do good research, publish in good journals, and get into the academic playing field because we're really not there yet compared, to say, the U.S. and European and Australian researchers." - Chris Lennard, Research Scientist, Climate Systems Analysis Group (CSAG), University of Cape Town; Lighthouse Focal Point for Africa, World Climate Research Program; Lead Author, IPCC AR6 WG2 Africa chapter