Starting this January, the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) has started a new working group—the International Climate Network Working Group—to help set up and optimize network infrastructures for their climate data sites around the world. They need network connections that can deal with petabytes of modeling and observational data, which will traverse more than 13,000 miles of networks (more than half the circumference of the Earth!), spanning two oceans.

By the end of 2014, this working group will aim to obtain at least 4Gbps of data transfer throughput at five of their climate data centers at PCMDI/LLNL (US), NCI/ANU (AU), CEDA/SFTC (UK), DKRZ (DE), and KNMI (NE). This goal runs in parallel with the Enlighten Your Research Global international networking program award that ESGF received this last November 2013. This initiative is lead by Dean Williams of Lawrence Livermore National Lab and ESnet’s Science Engagement Team, along with collaborating international network organizations in Australia (AARnet), Germany (DFN), the Netherlands (SURFnet), and the UK (Janet). We are helping to shepherd ESGF’s project and working group to make sure all their climate sites get up and running at proficient network speeds for the future peta-scale climate data that is expected within the next 5 years.

As we work closely with ESGF to pave the way for climate science, we look forward to developing a new set of networking best practices to help future climate science collaborations. In all, we are excited to get this started and see their science move forward!