The PRISM Support Initiative, COSMOS and OASIS4

The increasing complexity of Earth System Models (ESMs) and computing facilities puts a heavy technical burden on the research teams active in climate modelling. The Partnership for Research Infrastructures in earth System Modelling (PRISM) provides the Earth System Modelling community with a forum to promote sharing of development, maintenance and support of standards and software tools used to assemble, run, and analyse ESMs based on state-of-the-art component models (ocean, atmosphere, land surface, etc..) developed in the different climate research centres in Europe and elsewhere. PRISM is organised as a distributed network of experts who contribute to five “PRISM Areas of Expertise” (PAE): (1) Code coupling and input/output, (2) Integration and modelling environments, (3) Data processing, visualisation and management, (4) Meta-data, and (5) Computing. Some of the tools and concepts developed within PRISM have been incorporated in the COmmunity Earth System MOdelS (COSMOS) project, like the PRISM Compile and Runtime Environment and the OASIS3 coupler. Within PRISM, further development is on-going: one example is the OASIS4 coupler, which targets the next generation of Earth system models