Data coverage
The Community Earth System Model (CESM) Large Ensemble Numerical Simulation (LENS) dataset includes a 40-member ensemble of climate simulations for the period 1920-2100 using historical data (1920-2005) or assuming the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentration scenario (2006-2100), as well as longer control runs based on pre-industrial conditions. The data comprise both surface (2D) and volumetric (3D) variables in the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice domains. The total data volume of the original dataset is ~500TB, which has traditionally been stored as ~150,000 individual CF/NetCDF files on disk or magnetic tape made available through the NCAR Climate Data Gateway for download or via web services. NCAR has copied a subset (currently ~70 TB) of CESM LENS data to Amazon S3 as part of the AWS Public Datasets Program. To optimize for large-scale analytics we have represented the data as ~275 Zarr stores format accessible through the Python Xarray library. Each Zarr store contains a single physical variable for a given model run type and temporal frequency (monthly, daily, 6-hourly).
Access & permitted use
Review the publisher’s documentation for availability, eligibility and permitted uses, including commercial analysis, model training and redistribution.
https://www.ucar.edu/terms-of-use/data
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