Abstract
Abstract. Earth system and climate modelling involves the simulation of processes on a wide range of scales and within and across various compartments of the Earth system. In practice, component models are often developed independently by different research groups, adapted by others to their special interests and then combined using a dedicated coupling software. This procedure not only leads to a strongly growing number of available versions of model components and coupled setups but also to model- and high-performance computing (HPC)-system-dependent ways of obtaining, configuring, building and operating them. Therefore, implementing these Earth system models (ESMs) can be challenging and extremely time consuming, especially for less experienced modellers or scientists aiming to use different ESMs as in the case of intercomparison projects. To assist researchers and modellers by reducing avoidable complexity, we developed the ESM-Tools software, which provides a standard way for downloading, configuring, compiling, running and monitoring different models on a variety of HPC systems. It should be noted that ESM-Tools is not a coupling software itself but a workflow and infrastructure management tool to provide access to increase usability of already existing components and coupled setups. As coupled ESMs are technically the more challenging tasks, we will focus on coupled setups, always implying that stand-alone models can benefit in the same way. With ESM-Tools, the user is only required to provide a short script consisting of only the experiment-specific definitions, while the software executes all the phases of a simulation in the correct order. The software, which is well documented and easy to install and use, currently supports four ocean models, three atmosphere models, two biogeochemistry models, an ice sheet model, an isostatic adjustment model, a hydrology model and a land-surface model. Compared to previous versions, ESM-Tools has lately been entirely recoded in a high-level programming language (Python) and provides researchers with an even more user-friendly interface for Earth system modelling. ESM-Tools was developed within the framework of the Advanced Earth System Model Capacity project, supported by the Helmholtz Association.
Highlights
Earth system models (ESMs) are widely used for studying past, present and future climates, processes in the different Earth system compartments, as well as the interactions between them
We developed ESM-Tools – a software that considerably reduces the difficulty of applying ESMs by providing a modular external modelling infrastructure that allows scientists to work with stand-alone as well as coupled setups in a very intuitive and straightforward manner
Since ESM-Tools provides a common infrastructure for a number of different models, the workflow does not change when changing to another model or high-performance computing (HPC) system
Summary
Earth system models (ESMs) are widely used for studying past, present and future climates, processes in the different Earth system compartments (e.g. atmosphere and ocean), as well as the interactions between them. Focus during development is on the scientific question to be studied rather than technical standards or reusability of the code This lack of modularity in coupled systems can make it very inefficient when it comes to replacing certain model components. The complete workflow for ESM applications includes tasks such as obtaining and compiling all source codes, managing input data and configuration files for model setup, submitting the executable to a multi-processor system, monitoring and logging the process and managing/post-processing output data These tasks require knowledge of the parameters used by the ESM such as build environment, configuration files (e.g. Fortran namelists) and I/O structure as well as knowledge of the specific HPC environment (e.g. installed libraries and batch system). In contrast to other software described above, e.g. MESSy or ESMF, ESM-Tools is designed to help scientists build and run different stand-alone models as well as coupled setups without any need of code adaptation.
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