HR: 14:10h
AN: SF33B-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD): A Cyberinfrastructure for Mesoscale Meteorology Research and Education
AU: * Droegemeier, K
EM: kkd@ou.edu
AF: University of Oklahoma, 100 East Boyd, Suite 1110, Norman, OK 73019
AB: A new National Science Foundation Large Information Technology Research (ITR) grant - known as Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) - has been funded to facilitate the identification, access, preparation, assimilation, prediction, management, analysis, mining, and visualization of a broad array of meteorological data and model output, independent of format and physical location. A transforming element of LEAD is dynamic workflow orchestration and data management, which will allow use of analysis tools, forecast models, and data repositories as dynamically adaptive, on-demand systems that can a) change configuration rapidly and automatically in response to weather; b) continually be steered by new data; c) respond to decision-driven inputs from users; d) initiate other processes automatically; and e) steer remote observing technologies to optimize data collection for the problem at hand. Having been in operation for slightly more than a year, LEAD has created a technology roadmap and architecture for developing its capabilities and placing them within the academic and research environment. Further, much of the LEAD infrastructure being developed for the WRF model, particularly workflow orchestration, will play a significant role in the nascent WRF Developmental Test Bed Center located at NCAR. This paper updates the status of LEAD (e.g., the topics noted above), its ties with other community activities (e.g., CONDUIT, THREDDS, MADIS, NOMADS), and the manner in which LEAD technologies will be made available for general use. Each component LEAD application is being created as a standards-based Web service that can be run in stand-alone configuration or chained together to build an end-to-end environment for on-demand, real time NWP. We describe in this paper the concepts, implementation plans, and expected impacts of LEAD, the underpinning of which will be a series of interconnected, heterogeneous virtual IT "Grid environments" designed to provide a complete framework for mesoscale meteorology research and education. A set of Integrated Grid and Web Services Testbeds will maintain a rolling archive of several months of recent data, provide tools for operating on them, and serve as an infrastructure (i.e., a mini Grid) for developing distributed Web services capabilities. Education Testbeds will integrate education and outreach throughout the entire LEAD program, and will help shape LEAD research into applications that are congruent with pedagogic requirements, national standards, and evaluation metrics. Ultimately, the LEAD environments will enable researchers, educators, and students to run atmospheric models and other tools in much more realistic, real time settings than is now possible, with emphasis on the use of locally or otherwise uniquely available data.
UR: http://lead.ou.edu
DE: 3337 Numerical modeling and data assimilation
DE: 0910 Data processing
SC: Special Focus: Advances in Data Acquisition, Management, Analysis and Display [SF]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting