On virtual observatories and modelled realities (or why discharge must be treated as a virtual variable)

Abstract

Out there in the cloud, there is more computing power, and there are more databases, more images, more models and more model output than have ever existed before. There also are a variety of projects in different countries to provide ways of making all that information more readily available at different scales and to different types of users, such as the Natural Environment Research Council-funded pilot Virtual Observatory project in the UK, the Earth Cube initiative of the US National Science Foundation, and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. There also are calls for hyper-resolution earth system science models at the global scale, analogous to virtual observatories, as a way ahead in predicting global change (Wood et al., 2011).