Open position on the CMIP7 Data Access Task Team
The Data Access Task Team The demand for and interest in CMIP data is growing rapidly with users coming from an increasingly diverse range of backgrounds beyond the climate research community including climate services, impact modelling, regional and local policy/decision makers, and indigenous communities from across the globe.
The CMIP6 Community Survey highlighted a number of opportunities for increasing equitable access to, and the utility of, CMIP data. These include:
• Streamlining and making the processes for supplying CMIP-compatible data more accessible.
• Simplifying the user experience for data provisioning, access, and use.
• Facilitating community tool development.
• Supporting wider access to compute and analysis platforms.
• Reducing technical and resource-limitation barriers particularly for those in the global south.
This task team seeks to smooth the path between the conception of experiments and the use of the resulting data.
Desired experience
The Data Access Task Team is a diverse group of experts representing the range of CMIP-like data providers, data users, and infrastructure providers. A single position on the Task Team has become
available. We welcome applicants for this position with some or all of the following skills and experience:
• Experience in providing data to coordinated experiments including but not necessarily limited to CMIP.
• Experience in the large-scale use of CMIP or CMIP-like data including under strong resource constraints.
• Experience in the distribution of data to user communities at large scale.
• Experience in the provisioning of computing services to user communities.
• Technical communication and moderation skills applicable to the climate science domain, experience in dealing with transdisciplinary projects, working across cultures and time zones, understanding, and achieving diversity goals.
Task Team Objectives
This task team is building on the CMIP6 Community Survey feedback and conducting further community and stakeholder engagement to determine the data provisioning and access needs for CMIP7 and related activities. Future work will prioritise key areas of action and work with users, CMIP-related infrastructure teams, and other stakeholders (e.g., IPCC) across the globe to deliver user co-created solutions. These will guide the implementation in the CMIP7 cycle, within the limitations of available or projected human and financial resources.
The Task Team’s objectives are to:
• identify key barriers to data provisioning and access across a wide range of roles, especially data providers and data users with varying levels of access to resources.
• explore ways to lighten and/or generalise CMIP processes for design, specification, and coordination among and between projects.
• survey and synthesise activities and plans from existing activities including the evolving ESGF, the Pangeo community, and others.
• identify opportunities for reuse and generalisation of data provisioning and access tools including encapsulation/containerization.
• explore a wide range of models for co-location of computational and data resources including the addition of computing to ESGF nodes, use of commercial and non-commercial clouds, and possibilities for leveraging intergovernmental or commercial interest in CMIP and related data
Deadline: November 1, 2023
(this is not a paid role)
