Running climate models on grids using G-Rex

Bretherton, D. A., Blower, J. D., Haines, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2768-2374 and Smith, G.C. (2009) Running climate models on grids using G-Rex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 367 (1890 ). 847 -853. ISSN 1364-503X doi: 10.1098/rsta.2008.0179

Abstract/Summary

Compute grids are used widely in many areas of environmental science, but there has been limited uptake of grid computing by the climate modelling community, partly because the characteristics of many climate models make them difficult to use with popular grid middleware systems. In particular, climate models usually produce large volumes of output data, and running them also involves complicated workflows implemented as shell scripts. A new grid middleware system that is well suited to climate modelling applications is presented in this paper. Grid Remote Execution (G-Rex) allows climate models to be deployed as Web services on remote computer systems and then launched and controlled as if they were running on the user's own computer. Output from the model is transferred back to the user while the run is in progress to prevent it from accumulating on the remote system and to allow the user to monitor the model. G-Rex has a REST architectural style, featuring a Java client program that can easily be incorporated into existing scientific workflow scripts. Some technical details of G-Rex are presented, with examples of its use by climate modellers.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/1278
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Environmental Systems Science Centre
Uncontrolled Keywords	grid middleware climate model Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean (NEMO) Web service representational state transfer (REST)
Publisher	Royal Society Publishing
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