The NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) partnered with the NASA Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Office (CCE Office) to create a high performance science cloud for this field campaign. ADAPT (Advanced Data Analytics PlaTform) in its current manifestation is a managed virtual machine (VM) environment most closely resembling a platform as a service (PaaS) cloud. The ABoVE campaign has a dedicated space on ADAPT called the ABoVE Science Cloud. The ABoVE Science Cloud combines high performance computing with emerging technologies and data management with tools for analyzing and processing geographic information to create an environment specifically designed for large-scale modeling, analysis of remote sensing data, copious disk storage for "big data" with integrated data management, and integration of core variables from in-situ networks. The ABoVE Science Cloud is a collaboration that is accelerating the pace of new Arctic science for researchers participating in the field campaign. Furthermore, by using the ABoVE Science Cloud as a shared and centralized resource, researchers reduce costs for their proposed work, making proposed research more competitive. The ABoVE Science Cloud is available to all ABoVE projects. To join ABoVE, see here >>

To learn more about the ADAPT Science Cloud, see this site developed by the NASA Center for Climate Simulation.

• Provides a shared set of computational and data resources to the ABoVE science team.
• Enables access to large, common data sets (both observation and model) that are relevant to the ABoVE research goals.
• Provides a system and collaboration environment by which results may be quickly and readily shared to the ABoVE research community and ultimately to decision makers.
• Enables researchers to propose larger problems, analytics, and more science than they could address using the capabilities of typical computer workstations.
• Provides tailored computational, analysis, and data management environments to meet the needs of the individual science projects.
• Supports researchers with comprehensive services to facilitate the use of advanced information technology, creation of metadata and documentation, and archival of finalized products.

The architecture of the ABoVE Science Cloud combines high-performance computing and cloud technologies to create an extremely flexible and agile platform with the following capabilities:

• Data services nodes are used for persistent services that need to be accessible from outside the science cloud. Virtual systems (either virtual machines or containers) will be deployed on the data services nodes to create web services that can be easily backed up and migrated for high availability.
• Database nodes in the science cloud can be used for high performance, highly available database requirements.
• Remote visualization nodes enable server side graphical processing and rendering of data.
• High performance compute nodes will be used for itinerant or elastic processing requirements capable of supporting 100's of virtual machines. In the event that a specific researcher or even a web service needs additional processing capability for a short time period, the cloud can be configured to provision additional virtual machines to run processing in parallel and greatly reduce the time to solution.
• High-speed and high-capacity storage are configured for use throughout the science cloud for a variety of purposes, including redundant, snapshotted home directories for code development, scratch space for scientific processing, and large data storage repositories for public data. Three pre-ABoVE funded investigations are creating data products using MODIS and Landsat data sets currently stored in the science cloud. Proposing investigators can expect to request support and assistance to ingest and manage additional data sets of high importance for ABoVE research (e.g. commercial high-resolution satellite imagery; core observational data identified in the Concise Experiment Plan).

• ADAPT - The Advanced Data Analytics PlaTform (ADAPT) is a managed virtual machine (VM) environment incorporating storage, compute, and cloud computing capabilities, and is specifically designed for large-scale data analytics. ABoVE investigators can use this system as part of their work on the ABoVE Science Cloud. Find more information here >>.
• Prism GPU Cluster - To support the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, NCCS has built a 22-node GPU cluster with NVIDIA v100 GPUs. ABoVE investigators can use this system as part of their work on the ABoVE Science Cloud. Find more information here>>.
• Discover supercomputer - NCCS has an over 129,000-core supercomputer cluster for processing batch jobs requiring significant compute resources. Find more information here >>. ABoVE has requested an allotment to process small jobs on Discover. ABoVE researchers can use this allotment for testing code, but ABoVE researchers desiring extensive use of Discover for their project should discuss their eligibility with NCCS here >> and plan to submit a request for an allotment on Discover.

Data products can be added to the ASC as needed based on the requirements of ABoVE investigators and the needs of the overall ABoVE Science Team. A list of available products in the ASC can be found here, and see below for a selection of the large data collections on the ASC.

• ABoVE Data Products – ABoVE products archived at NASA DAACs are included as a collection on the ASC. Staged products include airborne datasets collected in support of ABoVE such as AVIRIS-ng, LVIS, and some L- and P-band SAR datasets, as well as other archived field data products (see the full collection here). Additional products can be added as they become available and as needed by the Science Team.
• Landsat (186 TB) – A version of Landsat Surface Reflectance is available for the ABoVE domain covering Landsat 5 – 8 and extending to cover most of North America north of 50 N latitude. Best effort is made to keep a consistent surface reflectance version throughout these datasets. The data are made available in native Landsat path/row format, other configurations are the responsibility of the user.
• Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)– Collection 6 MODIS land products processed using MODAPS and available from the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) can be accessed through the science cloud. Additional MODIS standard products can be made available upon request
• Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications MERRA-2 (320 TB) – The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) datasets are accessible through the science cloud. Future versions of MERRA such as Polar MERRA may be available upon request.
• DigitalGlobe (~5 PB) – The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) has contracted the use of DigitalGlobe data for US federal government purposes. Data from multiple DigitalGlobe satellites (including data from multiple DigitalGlobe satellites: IKONOS, GeoEye-1, QuickBird, WorldView-1, -2, and -3) are available in the science cloud. Most of the DigitalGlobe imagery on the ASC is Basic (1B) imagery which has not been orthorectified or converted to reflectance. For more information on how to do this, see the "How To" webpage here.
• Planet imagery – NASA–funded researchers can request access to Planet imagery through the NASA Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program. Find out more information here. Request an account here. The ABoVE Science Cloud is not required to process Planet imagery, but individual ABoVE researchers could use their ASC account to download and process imagery if desired.

The ABoVE Science Cloud combines high performance computing with emerging technologies and data management with tools for analyzing and processing geographic information to create an environment specifically designed for large-scale modeling, analysis of remote sensing data, copious disk storage for "big data" with integrated data management, and integration of core variables from in-situ networks.

An occasional webinar series is held to discuss projects and processing on the science cloud. If you are interested in presenting, or have a topic you would like discussed, please contact Liz Hoy.
Presentations are recorded and made available from the link below.

See this webpage maintained by the NCCS for more information.