Dear Colleagues,

After 5 years of successful operations, PRISM provides the Earth System Modelling (ESM) community with a forum to promote shared software infrastructure tools and best practice. Today, we would like to invite the ESM community to reinforce their contribution in PRISM.

The ever increasing complexity of Earth System Models and computing facilities puts a heavy technical burden on the research teams developing them. The goal of PRISM is to help share the development, maintenance and support of standards and state-of-the-art software tools to assemble, run, and analyse the results of Earth System Models based on component models (ocean, atmosphere, land surface, etc..) developed in the different climate research centres in Europe and elsewhere.

PRISM was initially funded as a project under the European Union's Framework Programme V (2001-2004) and its long term support is now ensured by multi-institute funding via the PRISM Support Initiative (PSI). More information about PRISM can be found on http://prism.enes.org.

Following the recommendations of the community review performed in 2005, PRISM is now organised as a distributed network of experts who contribute to five "PRISM Areas of Expertise" (PAE), listed below. Each PAE has the following remits:

- promotion and, if needed, development of software tools for Earth System Modelling;
- organisation of related network of experts, including technology watch;
- promotion and participation in the definition of community standards where needed;
- coordination with other PRISM Areas of Expertise related international activities.

1. Code coupling and I/O (S. Valcke, CERFACS):

This PAE develops, maintains and supports tools for coupling climate modelling component codes, ensures a technology watch on coupling tools developed outside PRISM, and maintains strong relations with the different projects involving code coupling in climate modelling internationally (e.g. ESMF, GENIE, FLUME, etc.).

2. Integration and modelling environments (M. Carter, Met Office):

This PAE coordinates technology reviews providing direction for further development, particularly noting developments in other PAEs and in related projects such as ESMF, FLUME and GENIE, in the following areas: version control, code extraction and compilation, job configuration, job running, integration with archive systems.

3. Data processing, visualisation and management (M. Lautenschlager, MPI-M&D):

This PAE, also covering data networking and federated archive architecture, interacts strongly with the PAE "Integration and modelling environments" to incorporate data management in the compiling and running environments, and also with the PAE"Metadata" for the automatic description of experiments, models, and numerical grids.

4. Meta-data (L. Steenman-Clark, NCAS/CGAM, Univ. Reading)

The goals of this PAE are to identify metadata requirements for PRISM, work towards the formulation of metadata standards, in collaboration with other Earth System Modelling projects, and stimulate discussion and interaction with the PRISM and broader ESM community to ensure that metadata provision meets the current and future needs of the ESM community.

5. Computing issues (R. Redler, NEC-CCRLE & M.-A. Foujols, IPSL)

This PAE promotes the exchanges in the community to identify open questions on computing related to Earth System Modelling and to stimulate discussion between users, computing centres and vendors. Furthermore this PAE provide means to reflect on a way towards Petacomputing in Earth System Modelling and on the lessons
we can learn from using the Earth Simulator and similar large systems.

We therefore would like to invite the wider Earth System Modelling community (ESM developers and users, IT experts, ...) to contribute their expertise to these PAEs. If you are interested in the activities of one or more PAEs or if you have questions on PRISM, please fell free to contact us and/or the relevant PAE leader(s). It will be a pleasure for us to welcome you in PRISM!

Please, forward this message to colleagues with potential interest.

With best regards,

The PRISM coordinators, Sophie Valcke and Eric Guilyardi