e-Science
Programme background
Harnessing computer power for environmental science.
What is e-Science?
e-Science is research made possible through modern distributed computer power. Scientists working in collaboration may be dispersed throughout the country or the world, but can work together on large data sets, using terrascale computing resources and sharing computer-based research tools. The internet and the grid are the main infrastructures supporting this. The grid, named by analogy with national power grids, connects regional and national computer networks (or individual grids) and should eventually create a universally available source of computing power. Researchers believe that consistent and inexpensive access to high-powered computing facilities, databases, sensors (and collaborating colleagues) will transform science and human society, much as mainframe and personal computers have done.
What work is NERC supporting?
e-Science is allowing scientists to develop increasingly sophisticated models of the Earth system that help us to understand complex interactions within the system, and confidently predict and resolve environmental problems.
The high profile climateprediction.net project is mainly producing future climate change forecasts. It uses spare capacity on people's personal computers to run many models of our climate, each with slightly different starting points.
Climateprediction.net has used more than 400,000 personal computers volunteered by members of the public in 170 countries to run climate models. Since launching in 2003, these volunteers have simulated over 23 million years with a full, three-dimensional climate model, far exceeding the output of the world's top climate modelling supercomputers.e-Minerals Research is providing new ways to scale up our understanding of environmental geochemistry. This should help us understand how fluids interact with surfaces, and how pollutants are transported, or adsorbed onto mineral surfaces. British Nuclear Fuels have provided £500k support to this project to study the encapsulation of nuclear waste. This has involved the running of simulations of radiation damage in ceramics in order to propose materials for long term durable storage of radioactive waste.
GODIVA scientists are developing a new computational grid for working with ocean modelling data, and new software for visualising the large datasets from oceanic and atmospheric models. This work should help us better-understand the ocean's thermohaline circulation - responsible for Europe's temperate climate.
GENIE will provide long-term global warming and sea-level rise projections to aid in long-term planning for Thames barrage, nuclear waste facilities, power stations etc. The potential impact of climate change on the Greenland ice-sheet will be investigated. The future stability of this ice sheet is crucial for predicting the effects of climate change on ocean circulation. Sharing the data produced and providing open access to the system, is creating and supporting virtual organisations of Earth system modellers.
The NERC DataGrid (NDG) is building a grid which makes finding, accessing and using environmental data much easier, helping get the most out of the mass of environmental data available in archives. The system should help researchers compare and contrast data from an extensive range of international datasets. NDG is a key technology to deliver NERC's Strategic Plan.
Global coastal ocean modelling will develop a model for the coastal seas to improve the understanding of shelf sea contribution to the global carbon budget and which can be integrated in to larger earth system simulations. The final product will be a new estimate of the shelf seas contribution to the global carbon budget. This project is designed to investigate how to predict weather and climate changes for periods of up to 10 years ahead, and complements work at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change Research.
Creating a taxonomic e-Science will work on developing a web based taxonomy for two groups of plants and one group of animals and make these tools available via the web to encourage take up and use by taxonomists for other groups. Taxonomy is critical to the study of biodiversity and is well suited to the web being both information rich and requiring copious illustrations. Within this area of science this is seen as critical for the future health of the discipline and supports a key objective identified in the Science and Innovation investment framework 2004 - 2014.
Grid for Coupled Ensemble Prediction (GCEP) will test the sensitivity of the climate on decadal timescales to initial conditions of the ocean, and the distributions of ice, soil moisture and snow cover.