Modeling the Earth system. Critical computational technologies that enable us to predict our planet's future

The wealth of data to be collected from future Earth Observing systems is only the beginning of the process of being able to predict what will happen to our environment in response to natural and human induced changes. The models employed today will evolve to couple detailed processes in the solid earth, land surface, biosphere, atmosphere and oceans at orders of magnitude higher resolution into prediction systems that can be validated against these observations. These systems will stress the technology requirements for data movement, access, ingestion, computing throughput, and model construction. The Japanese Earth Simulator is the most recent advance in the technology that will support a whole Earth modelling capability, but is only the first step. Future demands will require 5 orders of magnitude improvement in computing technology over that of the Earth Simulator. Model complexity will demand software technologies that do not exist today for computing technology requirements - both hardware and software - that result from such prediction systems.