In ACES we are exploring role of Globus grid technologies and associated developments that are part of the National Middleware Initiative. We are evaluating how these technologies can be adapted to provide responsive and manageable computation fabrics for Earth science research. Issues that we are researching range from how best these technologies can be used to reduce overall system operation costs to how best these technologies can be used to support a broad mix of end-user compute requirements.

Members of ACES are actively participating in development of standard technology infrastructure for Earth system modedling. Efforts in this area include active participation in the national Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) initiative. An article in Computers in Science and Engineering describing the ESMF project can be found here . The ESMF software and API standard is currently targeted at advanced Earth system model developers. Within ACES we will be researching enhancements and extensions to the ESMF standard that will enable it to be an effective productivity tool for Earth system model users.