Data Storage System for Analysis of Climate Change Simulations and Climate Change Impacts Research

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Summary The infrastructure proposed here is a local Data Storage System intended to complement a climate science dedicated 1024-core high-performance cluster (Nefelibata) that went into operation in October 2016 as part of the infrastructure obtained by the Canada Research Chair in Climate Dynamics resident at St Francis Xavier University. The cluster provides our researchers and students the ability to run computationally expensive parallelizable Global Climate Models and high-resolution Regional Climate Models within a workable time frame on account of the fast inter-processor communication. Climate modelling forms a core component of the CRC in Climate Dynamics (Beltrami) and MacDougall’s research programs. Nefelibata’s access is currently managed such that our team, graduate students and Canadian collaborators have full and unimpeded access to the resource. However, because the cluster is located 200 km away in Halifax, continuous transfer of high volumes of data for analysis and interpretation of the climate simulation is time consuming, inefficient and unrealistic. The requested Data Storage System will enable faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to conduct the analysis for their research on regional climate modeling, much more efficiently and to have a competitive advantage nationally and internationally. Such a resource is particularly important to understand the processes involved in energy exchanges between the lower atmosphere, the ground and the subsurface, which is one of the most neglected areas of research within global understanding of the Earth’s energy balance. In addition, a local data storage and analysis system will allow for the modelling of regional scale processes relevant to industry such as the generation of energy, for example, wind energy, and to local municipalities -in particular rural areas, and regional communities seeking to implement local-scale policies to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. The local data storage equipment requested is critical to the efficient analysis of the climate simulations generated from the remote cluster. Given that the volume of data generated by climate models is huge, our local storage facilitate is crucial for the analysis and interpretation and to achieve the research objectives and training goals of our group at StFX. This data storage infrastructure will facilitate ongoing collaborations of our team with other researchers at StFX University in the area of mitigation and adaptation to climate change that include health and social scientists. The infrastructure will be a benefit for Canada and Atlantic Canada, as well as improving the research capacity, recruitment and retention of faculty and the recruitment of graduate students under a new agreement between Memorial University of Newfoundland and StFX, allowing Doctoral students to be resident at StFX.