Enhancing Climate Research Capabilities in Australia

The Climate Science Data Enhanced Virtual Laboratory (Climate DeVL) project supports the Australian climate research community to access, process and analyse large amounts of climate data sets.
Satellite imagery of a hurrican in the Gulf of Mexico

The Climate Science Data Enhanced Virtual Laboratory (Climate DeVL) project supports the Australian climate research community to access, process and analyse large amounts of climate data sets.

The Climate DeVL project was partly funded by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and led by the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). A major focus of the Climate DeVL was enabling researchers to contribute to, and make use of the World Climate Research Programme’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6).  

“The CMIP6 dataset will be the largest collection of climate data ever produced.  The Climate DeVL makes this data accessible and analysable for Australian researchers. As the large scientifically-rich climate model data sets are released from the U.S.A., Europe, U.K., Asia and Australia, they need to be immediately synchronised and made available for use with our other data sets,” Dr Ben Evans, NCI Associate Director said.

CMIP6 is a collaborative research programme designed to improve knowledge of climate change through the sharing and comparison of climate models from around the globe.  Locally, CMIP6 will assist Australian governments, business, agriculture and industry to manage climate risks and opportunities related to climate variability, change and extremes.

Petascale data management and high-performance data systems are a vital component in enabling climate research in Australia. NCI’s integrated data storage, supercomputing and data services provide the only platform in Australia capable of supporting the intensive data analysis and simulation that CMIP6 requires.

Providing high-quality data directly to the climate community is a deeply collaborative effort involving lead climate science agencies internationally and within Australia. Co-investors of this project include CSIROthe Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEx) and the National Environmental Science Programme Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub (ESCC) .

The Climate DeVL project has been extended and is now scheduled to wrap up in January 2020.