Project Info

Lossy compression for climate model data

Dorit Hammerling | hammerling@mines.edu 

Climate models are becoming ever more powerful due to increases in computational speed and scientific discoveries. The output from these models is huge and data storage abilities can’t keep up and often the output has to be discarded due to limited storage availability. This has led to a de facto bottleneck in further scientific advances to understand our climate, and its future. Lossy compression is one potential way to deal with this issue, but needs to be applied judiciously to avoid any negative consequences on the scientific integrity of the data, and the conclusions drawn from it.

Elucidate the interdisciplinary nature of the project

This project calls for interdisciplinary expertise from a variety of fields such as ethics, cultural studies, engineering education, and STS (science and technology studies). This project is novel as it compares different dimensions (personal, societal, and professional) of students’ ethics education experiences and examines their experiences in specific institutional and educational cultures. Undergraduate researchers will receive interdisciplinary research experience under the mentorship of faculty members from two departments: Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences (HASS) and Engineering, Design and Society (EDS).

More Information

This manuscript gives an overview of the subject of compression in the context of climate data: https://www.geosci-model-dev.net/9/4381/2016/

This is a tech note written by undergraduate students who worked on this project last summer: https://opensky.ucar.edu/islandora/object/technotes%3A565

Grand Engineering Challenge: Engineer the tools of scientific discovery