NASA Center for Climate Simulation

Overview

The purpose of the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) Framework for Live User-Invoked Data (FLUID) is to provide applications for interactive analysis and visualizations of experimental climatological data in support of the GMAO mission. Adopting more modern approaches to user-invoked data, or providing data “as-needed,” implies the need for more efficient and intuitive access to data and scalability. With diverse and voluminous GMAO data on NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) systems, the software, hardware, and even user access now require adaptations to fulfill requests from many research areas and devices for both internal and public consumption.

Project Details

Built where the data lives, GMAO FLUID applications tie together GMAO experimental data with products delivered to scientists at the GMAO, other NASA organizations, and beyond. FLUID uses a virtual environment on the NCCS development DataPortal. The Python-based web application has a backend tied to the Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS) software for image processing.

Results and Impact

FLUID performance on generating individual images has a slight delay compared to pre-generated visualizations or analyses. However, animations consist of several requests at once, and parallel processing and caching of pre-requested visualizations significantly reduce delays and make production more efficient. Mounted data paths to the GMAO MERRA-2 reanalysis product and OPeNDAP connections to the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System (GFS) allow a broader scope of data retrieval and analysis.

Why HPC Matters

From decades of MERRA-2 climatological data to the most current experimental forecast, GEOS data consumes a large amount of storage necessary to serve requests for current or historical weather events. With the NCCS Discover supercomputing cluster, GEOS can produce 5- and 10-day forecasts at higher resolutions as just one of an ensemble of data products that are available for public use. Peripheral software including visualizations of static imagery, FTP servicing of data downloads, mission-specific support projects, and even monitoring of GMAO research are all performed using high-performance computing (HPC) systems for greater efficiency and higher quality and quantity of computation.

What’s Next

Mission support, MERRA-2 reanalyses, and seasonal-to-sub-seasonal data products will be just a few of the GMAO research areas into which FLUID development will be expanding. As citizen science becomes more prevalent in the industry, researchers will create more products from both GEOS and GMAO FLUID to aid in verifying observations and to achieve greater educational understanding of assimilated quantities.