System for Land Surface Model Applications Based on Cloud Computing

Cloud computing satisfies the requirement for large volumes of storage and computing resources to simulate land surface models (LSMs). Thus, the Science Cloud of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is based on a data cloud and high performance computing cloud, was adopted to support the simulation of LSMs. In this paper, we take advantage of the software and hardware resources of the Science Cloud to establish a prototype system for LSM applications. First, pre-processing and post-processing are crucial components of LSMs, so we specifically designed a freely available integrated software package called “PPLSMS”(for the pre- and post-processing of LSMs) with different scripting languages and data sets, which can be built on the cloud computing platform. Second, we developed a dedicated Web portal for LSMs based on the cloud computing platform with the representational state transfer application programming interface, which allows the operation of functions, such as parameter and data selection, model configuration, as well as customization of the output, statistics and visualization via a Web browser. Finally, some basic steps were presented to operate the Web portal for LSM applications. The system integrated data sets and approaches may serve as a practical means to facilitate the simulation of LSMs.