A 'Common Information Model' for the climate modelling process

The Common Information Model (CIM), developed by the EU-funded METAFOR project (http://metaforclimate.eu), is a formal model of the climate modeling process. It provides a rich structured description of not only climate data but also the “provenance” of that data: the software models and tools used to generate that data, the simulations those models implement, the experiments those simulations conform to, etc.. This formal metadata model is expected to add value to those datasets by firstly codifying what is currently found only in the heads of climate experts (the aforementioned provenance of climate datasets), and secondly by allowing tools to be developed that make searching for and analysing climate datasets a much more intuitive process than it has been in the past.