A new series of regional models have been released at Climateprediction (CPDN).

Read about them here and here.

The feature is that we can select models specific to Southern Africa.

Hi Warped,

Brilliant ... many thanks for the heads-up on that change. I am currently crunching 'Famous' wok units, so it's going to be intesting to see how much resources these new work units are really going to require.

I really wish they would stop mucking about with the database, it is now the the second time in recent history where the credits have gone south and they have had to take the project down. Thankfully all is back to normal ... for now.

Cheers,
Neil.

It's a sad fact that CPDN has regular server issues. The latest is that the final upload of the Regional models cannot upload because the server is full!

The problems with the credits and accounts happened at the same time last year and it seems they failed to learn from the experience.

I must say I have mixed feelings about this project.

In favour of my supporting the project are:
1. Climate Change is clearly a critical issue for the future.
2. Climate Modelling is not an exact science and is a vast subject which needs every bit of crunching time we can put into it.
3. My wife is a geography teacher and this is a subject close to our hearts.

Counting against CPDN:
1. The constant issues with insufficient data storage space.
2. Apparent lack of planning when issuing new model types. (e.g. routers being unable to handle the volume of traffic etc).
3. It seems that the project is run on a shoe-string budget, having to beg for funds from the university authorities to keep the hardware going.
4. A nagging doubt about whether the data is actually being looked at if it needs to be archived so soon after the upload has taken place. Also the vast amount of data being produced vs only a handful of scientists working with it.

The latest outage and the resource situation is discussed here.

This merely confirms my reservations with the project.

I would have thought government funding for such important research would have been a formality.

Warped