Prototype of grid environment for earth system models

Within the EU IS-ENES project, the deployment of an e-infrastructure providing climate scientists with an efficient virtual proximity to distributed data and distributed computing resources is required. The access point of this infrastructure is represented by the v.E.R.C. (virtual Earth system modelling Resource Centre) web portal. It allows the Earth System Models (ESMs) scientists to run complex distributed workflows for executing ESM experiments and accessing to ESM data. The work describes the deployment of a grid prototype environment for running multi-model ensembles experiments. Considering existing grid infrastructures and services, the design of this grid prototype has been lead by the necessity to build a framework that leverage the external services offered within the European HPC ecosystem, e.g. DEISA, PRACE. The prototype allows exploiting advanced grid services, namely GRB services, developed at the University of Salento, Italy, and basic grid services offered by the Globus Toolkit middleware for submitting and monitoring the ensemble runs. The prototype has been deployed involving three sites: CMCC, DKRZ and BSC. A case study related to the HRT159, a global coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation model (AOGCM) developed by CMCC-INGV, has been considered.