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| CESM-CIME | |
|---|---|
| Name | CESM-CIME |
| Developer | National Center for Atmospheric Research / U.S. Department of Energy |
| Initial release | 2004 |
| Latest release | 2020s |
| Programming language | Fortran, C (programming language), Python (programming language) |
| Operating system | Linux, Unix |
| License | open-source |
CESM-CIME The Community Earth System Model - Common Infrastructure for Modeling the Earth (CESM-CIME) is a modular, extensible coupled modeling framework used for interactive simulations of Earth system science that integrates atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, land, and biogeochemical components. Developed and supported by institutions such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and the U.S. Department of Energy, it provides standardized APIs, build tools, and run-time management to enable reproducible experiments for researchers at Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NOAA, and other centers. CESM-CIME supports high-performance computing on systems at facilities like Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and NERSC.
CESM-CIME serves as the orchestration layer for the Community Earth System Model, handling component coupling, case creation, dependency resolution, and workflow automation. Its design emphasizes portability across supercomputing platforms such as Blue Waters, Summit (supercomputer), Frontera (supercomputer), and integration with community models developed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, and NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. The framework standardizes component interfaces for models like the Community Atmosphere Model, Parallel Ocean Program, and Community Land Model, while facilitating collaborations with projects at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
Origins trace to efforts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and collaborations with the U.S. Department of Energy in the early 2000s to unify earlier component coupling approaches used in projects such as the Community Climate System Model and the Model for Prediction Across Scales. Major milestones include integration of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project paradigms, adoption of the CIME layer to replace bespoke scripts from centers like Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and iterative refactoring for exascale readiness driven by programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. Governance and releases have involved community workshops held at National Center for Atmospheric Research and coordination through bodies like US CLIVAR.
CIME implements a modular architecture with a driver and a suite of component couplers; major components include the driver, the mapper, build system, and a component registry. It interfaces to atmosphere models such as the Community Atmosphere Model and regional variants developed at Naval Research Laboratory, ocean models like the Parallel Ocean Program and POP2, sea-ice modules influenced by CICE (sea ice model), and land models including the Community Land Model and biogeochemistry extensions used by International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme investigators. The architecture leverages build tools and version control workflows employed at GitHub repositories mirrored with Subversion histories from institutional archives. CIME supports couplers like the Model Coupling Toolkit style and integrates with I/O libraries such as NetCDF and Parallel HDF5 for standardized diagnostics.
Users create experiments via case set-up utilities that capture machine-specific configurations, namelist parameters, and component selections. The workflow supports job submission to batch systems like SLURM, PBS, and LSF on centers including NERSC and Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. Configuration templates map to parameter sets used in intercomparison projects such as CMIP6 and historical experiments archived by IPCC assessments. CESM-CIME automates reproducibility practices employed by groups at Imperial College London, Columbia University', and Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, enabling provenance capture, restart support, and post-processing hooks compatible with visualization tools from NCAR Graphics and analysis frameworks used at NOAA.
CIME standardizes the coupling interface between components to exchange fields such as fluxes, tracers, and coordinates with prescribed periodicity and interpolation handled by mapping utilities. Interfacing patterns reflect conventions adopted by the Earth System Modeling Framework and coupling strategies tested in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project protocols. The interface design allows substitution of component implementations from groups like Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and ETH Zurich while preserving run-time coupling semantics required by multi-decadal climate integrations and coupled data assimilation systems developed at NOAA ESRL.
Researchers use CESM-CIME for climate projection experiments contributing to IPCC reports, process studies into El Niño–Southern Oscillation, monsoon dynamics researched at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, paleoclimate reconstructions coordinated with PAGES (Past Global Changes) scientists, and regional downscaling workflows produced for stakeholders including USGS and EPA. Applications include evaluation of climate feedbacks studied at Princeton and Columbia University, attribution studies associated with World Weather Attribution, and vulnerability assessments informing policy processes at United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings.
Performance engineering for CESM-CIME targets scalability on systems like Summit (supercomputer) and Frontera (supercomputer), with profiling and optimization activities conducted in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Validation suites compare model output to observational datasets from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Hadley Centre, and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalyses, and participate in benchmarking exercises tied to CMIP6 and intercomparison campaigns coordinated by WCRP. Continuous integration and regression testing practices follow patterns used in projects at GitHub and community codes maintained by NCAR.
Category:Earth system models