Environmental e-Science in the UK

China Workshops December 2005

Environmental e-Science in the UK

Keith HainesBMT Marine Informatics Chair: Reading University

Expertise: Ocean/Atmosphere Data Assimilation

Reading e-Science Centre

www.resc.rdg.ac.uk

NERC


NERC’s Scientific StrategyScience Priorities

Earth’s life-support systems (water, biogeochemical cycles, biodiversity, carbon cycle)

Climate Change (prediction, mitigation, quantifying the carbon cycle, atmospheric composition, ocean circulation, ice caps)

Sustainable economies (sustainable solutions for - energy, land use, climate change, hazard mitigation, agriculture)

• e-Science is Multidisciplinary• Promotes Collaborative Research Methods

University Research (including Computer Science)NERC Research Institutes: British Antarctic Survey, Proudman Ocean Lab…UK Met Office and Hadley Centre, Environment Agency...


Applications ProjectsProjects Rounds

1 & 2Round 3

Climateprediction.net £434k £284k

Grid for Ocean Diagnostics, Interactive Visualisation and Analysis (GODIVA)

£858k

Environment from the molecular level (e-Minerals)

£1,679k £1,336k

Grid ENabled Integrated Earth systems model (GENIE)

£1,483k £1,130k

The NERC DataGrid £826k £722k

Grid for Coupled Ensemble Prediction Studies (GCEPS)

£723k

Global coastal ocean modelling £736k

Creating a taxonomic e-Science £533k

£5,280k £5,464k

Comp./Data

Comp

Data

Comp

Comp

Data

Comp

Comp

Data


NERC’s e-Science programme

• 2 Centres of e-Science expertise

• 8 Collaborative Application projects

• e-Science Coordinator : Ned [email protected]


National Institute for Environmental e-Science

• Focus on promotion and supports the use of e-science and grid technologies within the UK environmental science community.

• Holds workshops, courses, training events, visitor programmes, demonstration projects.

• Also attendance from non governmentagencies and private sector.

• To date has run 38 events with over 1,800 attendees.

• Recent delegation from China

Martin Dove: [email protected]


Reading e-Science Centre

• Regional Centre of Excellence in e-Science• Building on Reading’s Environmental connections

– Met Office, ECMWF, Environment Agency, ESA– Companies: BMT, Vita Nuova, Barrodale Computing Services

• Contributing to e-Science Middleware– Styx Grid Services– CoLinux for Campus Grids

• Ongoing Projects include:– Web Services for National Centre for Ocean Forecasting Products

www.ncof.gov.uk– Search and Rescue at SEA (Decision Support Tool)– Geospatial Database Technology (4D Gridded data in databases)– Climate Data Analysis Toolbox (CDAT) development

• Enabling technology demostrators

Jon Blower: [email protected]


5 COMPUTATIONAL GRID PROJECTSEnsemble Climate Modelling


• Distributed Global Collaborations• Hadley climate model cut down to run on single PC (cf. Seti@home)• 105,000 people from 150 countries have donated 10,000 years of

computing time to undertake climate change experiments.• China >384 participants

www.climateprediction.net

http://www.climateprediction.net/


• Over 2,500 simulations over a 45 year period showed a possible temperature increase of 2 - 11°C by 2050.

• Results from 2,579 15 year runs by climateprediction.net

• Results from 127 30 year runs of the Hadley model on the Met Office supercomputer

http://www.climateprediction.net/


Regional Behaviour – European Rain and Snowfall

Mediterranean Basin Northern Europe

Winter Winter

Summer Summer

Annual Annual

Unpublished analysis from climateprediction.net


GENIE• Grid-Enabled Integrated Earth System model

• Build fast Earth System model with distributed components

• Study long-term climate change and palaeoclimate

• Components for atmosphere, ocean, land,

ice, ocean/land biogeochemistry, ocean sediments

• Explore model parameter space and forcings

• Novel techniques for model framework, integration, data management, visualization

www.genie.ac.uk

Response of Atlanticcirculation to freshwater forcing


GENIE Computing Resources

National Grid Service (GT2)

Oxford Leeds

RAL Manchester

InstitutionalResources (GT2)

Imperial Condor PoolSouthampton Condor Pool

Flocked Condor Pools

Matlab Jython.py files

Geodise Java API

CondorNative

CondorWeb Service

GlobusGT2

OMII_1Services

Java Client Java CoG OMII API

.m files

www.genie.ac.uk


Grid for Coupled Ensemble Prediction (GCEP)• Full Hadley Climate models run on PC Clusters (not HPC)• Initial condition (Ocean, Ice, Land) Ensemble prediction ~10yrs =>Assimilation<=eg. Initialised ensemble forecasts of global mean temperature

Hadley Centre Results

Other useful predictions

•Thermohaline strength•Poleward Ht. transport•Sea Ice extent•Nino3, NAO…•Precipitation•Snow Cover•Storm Statistics.


Global Coastal Ocean Modelling (GCOM)

www.pol.ac.uk/gcom

• Coastal seas are 7% of the ocean surface area but contribute 30% of biological production.

• Develop model for the coastal seas to improve the understanding of their contribution to the global carbon budget.

• Integrate into larger Earth System models.

Red = depth < 1000m


e-Minerals

• Model atomic processes involved in environmental issues (radioactive waste disposal, pollution, weathering).

• Collaboration with British Nuclear Fuels studying resistance of materials to radioactive decay events.

• High level briefings given to:– Foundation of Science & Technology

which briefs MPs and Lords

– World Technology Leaders Conferencein Seoul

– Science and Technology in Society forumin Kyoto in September 2005

www.eminerals.org

Simulation of radiation damage in the mineral

zircon.


3 DATA GRID PROJECTSEnvironmental Data Services


GODIVA Data Portal• Grid for Ocean Diagnostics, Interactive

Visualisation and Analysis

• Daily Met Office Marine Forecasts and gridded research datasets

• National Centre for Ocean Forecasting

• ~3Tb climate model datastore via Web Services

• Interactive Visualisations inc. Movies

• ~ 30 accesses a day worldwide

• Other GODIVA software produces 3D/4D Visualisations reading data remotely via Web Services

Online Movies

www.nerc-essc.ac.uk/godiva


GODIVA Visualisations• Unstructured Meshes

• Grid Rotation/Interpolation

• GeoSpatial Databases v. Files (Postgres, IBM, Oracle)• Perspective 3D Visualisation

• Google maps viewer


Spin-Offs:Decision Support Tools and Live Data

• BMTs Search and Rescue at Sea decision tool linked to Met Office data with GODIVA Web Services

• Demonstration for

UK CoastGuard • New £2.2m DEWS project:

Extend Marine and Health applications of Met data

BMTs SARIS system

BMTs OSIS system


• Easy-to-use, lightweight middleware for e-Science

• 5-minute installation

• Expose existing executables as services

• Run them from the command line exactly as if they were local programs

• Create workflows with simple shell scripts (above right)

• Perform computational steering and collaborative visualization (below right)

• http://jstyx.sf.net

daily_means means.nc snapshot*.nc –output-refsmakegif means.nc means.gif

daily_means makegif

snapshot*.nc means.gif

Spin-Offs:Styx Grid Services


NERC Data Grid

• The DataGrid focuses on federation of NERC Data Centres

• Grid for data discovery, delivery and use across sites

• Data can be stored in many different ways (flat files, databases…)

• Strong focus on Metadata and Ontologies

• Clear separation between discovery and use of data.

• Prototype focussing on Atmospheric and Oceanographic data

www.ndg.nerc.ac.uk


• Literature scattered over 250 years of paper publications.

• Data inaccessible other than to specialist users

• Aim to transfer in toto the taxonomy of two groups of organisms to the web (Hawkmoths and Aroids).

• Broad aim: to encourage migration of taxonomy to the web.

• Provide data for those studying biodiversity.

• Encourage quality control, peer-review and the development of “consensus” taxonomies in the web environment.

• Develop means of citation for web-based revisions

Arisaema candidissimumPhoto : RBG Kew

The Hawkmoth Sphinx caligineus sinicus from Beijing, China.Photo: Tony Pittaway

Creating a Taxonomic e-Science


Environmental e-Science needs

• Geospatial Data Grids– Large data (Tb Model output – Pb Satellite)

– Good Geospatial tools (GIS) and standards for extension to 4D atmosphere/ocean data

– Advanced remote visualisation (movies; perspective 3D)

• Computational Grids– Ensemble modelling increasingly important (Climate/Earth system) =>

HPC not critical: distributed resources OK (large data volumes)

– Statistical prediction tools (averaging over atmospheric chaos)

– Legacy model codes need to run multi-platform

• Distributed Data/Modelling Expertise– Taxonomy

– Earth System modelling (Atmos. Ocean, Land, Ice, Biology, Chemistry…)


Summary

• NERC e-Science projects are “application-oriented” – i.e. close to end users

• Good opportunities to engage Government Agencies and Commercial Community– Live Environmental Data

– Extreme event warnings; Disaster management tools (eg. oil spills)

– Commercial Decision Support tools : Tailored products and services

– Software companies for databases and GIS

• Environmental Middleware/Software tools Globally Applicable – International Collaborations, (eg. GIS, Metadata Standards,…)

– Met Office; ECMWF; Environment Agency, Maritime Companies; Seasonal Forecasting, ESA…..

Environmental e-Science in the UK

Documents

Transcript of Environmental e-Science in the UK