ICAMS Common Model Architecture Implementation Team

The Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services (ICAMS) Common Model Architecture (CMA) Implementation Team (IT) sits under the ICAMS Earth System Modeling and Prediction Subcommittee (ESMP) of the Committee on Research and Innovation (CoRI). The objective of CMA is to facilitate communication between related CMA IT groups physics interoperability (PI) and content standard (CS), as well as high performance computing (HPC) and global modeling (GM) under CoRI and other external ICAMS groups.

CMA’s overachieving goal is to promote and increase interoperability between US national modeling centers to allow for a better use of resources and better inter-comparisons of new capabilities. Common current practices and efforts in many modeling centers include, but not limited to, earth system component model coupling, physics and dynamic coupling, model physics, interoperability, and common standard. For example, many models now use the earth system modeling framework (ESMF), unified operational prediction capability (NUOPC), common community physics package (CCPP), workflow systems, and/or applications making use of graphics processing units (GPUs).

To gain a high-level view of earth system modeling community’s model developments, challenges, and future directions, CMA, PI, and CS ITs facilitate communication with experts across many US and foreign governments, modeling centers, universities, and industry. By inviting these experts to give a remote seminar, we were able to explore important common model architecture topics in recent years. These topics include the wildland fire modeling, wave modeling, dynamics and physics coupling, machine learning for weather and climate prediction, ESMF and NUOPC developments, data assimilation and ensemble forecast, community-based physical parameterization tools, hierarchical physics system developments, and physics constant, build, and workflow standards. We will discuss and summarize CMA’s ongoing work within different agencies to continue advancing the US earth system modeling capabilities into the future.