By Rob Mitchum // August 6, 2014
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is a world leader in collecting, storing, and working with data on meteorology, geosciences, and climate science. Because of the large amounts of data produced by field observations and complex computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere, NCAR has also historically been a major force in high-performance computing, establishing what is now called the Computational and Information Systems Lab in 1964. But despite these resources, as NCAR datasets grow ever more massive and research collaborations increasingly reach across countries and continents, sharing and moving that data becomes simultaneously more difficult and more important.
To overcome these science-slowing bottlenecks, Globus helped NCAR create an “enhanced data sharing service,” announced by the center earlier this week. Together with upgrades to NCAR’s Globally Accessible Data Environment (GLADE) file system, the center hopes to offer faster access to data and more tools for collaborative research.
“Scientific collaborations are global endeavors, and researchers need to share data with colleagues around the world. As data sets have grown in size and number, the process of moving and managing access to them has become a significant challenge,” said Pam Gillman, manager of NCAR’s Data Analysis Services Group. “Globus Plus is a robust and user-friendly service that eases the workflow, and it allows users to be more productive by spending less time on the minutiae of data transfers.”
NCAR joins the San Diego Supercomputing Center and several universities as users of Globus Plus services for research data management. Gillman recently attended the GlobusWorld 2014 conference in April, sharing a testimonial about how Globus has helped accelerate NCAR research, offering vast improvements from the days of flying tape drives around the world to share large datasets.