Climate Computing

Climate change remains a worldwide concern. Research to understand its causes and effects includes studies on the complex relationships between all parts of the Earth system, from the atmosphere to the ocean, studies that generate huge quantities of data.

Manipulating and understanding this systemic data requires enormous amounts of computing resources, and is the focus of a one-week workshop at ICTP.

The 'Conference on the Role of e-Infrastructures for Climate Change Research', which runs from 16 to 20 May, looks at the importance of collected computing resources not only as a way to share and access international data in a cost- and time-efficient manner, but also as a way to ultimately lead to a better understanding of climate change at global and regional scales.

The conference will cover broad aspects of climate change computing, from Grid networks in Europe and Asia to the role of e-infrastructures in climate research policies. Speakers will include policymakers as well as renowned climate change scientists. Participants will also learn about RegCM4, the regional climate model developed by ICTP's Earth System Physics section.

e-Infrastructures are collections of ICT-based resources--from PCs and supercomputers to storage systems and sensors--used by researchers to work on projects collaboratively via the internet. e-Infrastructures allow local problems, which could not be solved without external help, to be tackled on a global scale by connecting researchers to shared resources around the world. An added advantage to this shared computing is that it bridges the digital divide between less developed areas.

It is to this last point that the ICTP conference is particularly addressed. The majority of the participants are from developing countries, and will thus be exposed to new internet-based, collaborative research methods that they can take back to their home countries and implement.

According to conference director Stefano Cozzini, the conference will also increase awareness of e-science Grid projects already established in the developing world, such as the GISELA Project in Latin America, the South African National Grid (SAGrid), and ICTP's own computational physics centres in sub-Saharan Africa.

For more details, visit the conference website.

You can follow the conference proceedings via the GridCast blog.