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Project Progress

With many of the core components operating independently or near completion, this past report period focused on interface design, with focus on development of an Application Programming Interface (API) in Fortran to facilitate communication between different model components. Since many of the core components operate independently at radically different timescales, it is necessary for all common data and calculations to be stored in an accessible format with well-specified methods for retrieving information. Each code component accesses this information through a set of common subroutines, and stores the results for use by other programs.

Progress includes:

• Data structure design: This has now been fully specified in the draft API document. The initial structure has been designed for XML, but the overall format can be used for any structured database.
• Data structure function library: The function library is now fully specified in the draft API, and a modest, VPL-specific XML library now exists for Fortran 95.
• Interface scheme: The interface model assumes that a database exists containing relevant parameters, and data sets are accessed through a well-specified API. A given code component, rather than handing material off to another component in sequence, registers the results in the database, and sets relevant flags informing other code components that new calculations exist.

Testbed web interface for climate: The main benefit of the XML/Database model is the ease by which models can be run and results displayed over the Internet. As a full test, using an XML web interface, we developed a web front end for Giovanna Tinetti’s climate code. This allows the user to enter planet parameters (or develop a planet ‘state’ file) and generate model temperature profiles that can be imported into other core components. This is the first step towards a true community tool.