PRISM and ENES: a European approach to Earth system modelling

Europe's widely distributed climate modelling expertise, now organized in the European Network for Earth System Modelling (ENES), is both a strength and a challenge. Recognizing this, the European Union's Program for Integrated Earth System Modelling (PRISM) infrastructure project aims at designing a flexible and friendly user environment to assemble, run and post‐process Earth System models. PRISM was started in December 2001 with a duration of three years. This paper presents the major stages of PRISM, including: 1 [(1)] the definition and promotion of scientific and technical standards to increase component modularity;2 [(2)] the development of an end‐to‐end software environment (graphical user interface, coupling and I/O system, diagnostics, visualization) to launch, monitor and analyse complex Earth system models built around state‐of‐art community component models (atmosphere, ocean, atmospheric chemistry, ocean bio‐chemistry, sea‐ice, land‐surface); and3 [(3)] testing and quality standards to ensure high‐performance computing performance on a variety of platforms.PRISM is emerging as a core strategic software infrastructure for building the European research area in Earth system sciences. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.