NCAR computing and data access

NCAR computing

Supervised by Computational & Information Systems Lab (CISL, www2.cisl.ucar.edu)

• User responsibilities
• YubiKeys: If you don't have it yet, come to PAS 576 ASAP to get yours.
• Computing systems:Yellowstone, soon to be replaced by Cheyenne
• Data analysis and visualization systems: Geyser and Caldera
• Disk spaces: GLADE and HPSS

NCAR data access

TBs of data available through Research Data Archive (rda.ucar.edu):

• Reanalyses
• Climatological data

NASA data access

Search NASA EarthData (earthdata.nasa.gov)

• MERRA reanalysis data can also be found at MDISC (disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/mdisc/)

CMIP model output

• CMIP5 output from Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) at Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI)
• CESM output available at NCAR's Earth System Grid (ESG, https://www.earthsystemgrid.org) at NCAR

Data formats

• GRIB (GRidded Binary): WMO-supported format for reanalyses, NWP output, and met data.
• HDF (Hierarchical Data Format): www.hdfgroup.com; NASA data usually provided in their own version, HDF-EOS
• NetCDF (Network Common Data Format): NCAR's data format at unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf; CESM, WRF, and CMIP output written to this.
  • Input/output using C/Fortran libraries
  • NCO: nco.sourceforge.net

C shell

Example script

NCAR Command Language (NCL)

Programming language for reading, processing, and visualizing climate model ouput:

• Documentation at ncl.ucar.edu
• Example code
• Regression
• Contour maps
• X-Y plots