(Wikipedia)The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source middleware system for volunteer and grid computing. It was originally developed to support the SETI@home project before it became useful as a platform for other distributed applications in areas as diverse as mathematics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, and astrophysics. The intent of BOINC is to make it possible for researchers to tap into the enormous processing power of personal computers around the world.
What is climateprediction.net (CPDN)?
http://climateprediction.net/Climateprediction.net is a distributed computing project [running under BOINC] to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2100 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers - time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.
In September 2011 Randi and Caro formed a BOINC team with members of the Old Weather project. Philip Brohan from the science team lent his support:
Also from Philip: Scientific progress goes ...philip.brohan wrote: I'd like to second Randi's recommendation of climateprediction.net. It's a different sort of citizen science (your computer does the work, not you) but it's just as valuable as OldWeather in extending our understanding of how the climate works. Give it a try - you could participate in CPDN and OldWeather at the same time - your computer can be simulating the climate of the future while you read the logbooks and recover the climate of the past.
It's not likely that we'll be using CPDN for building the weather reconstructions anytime soon - technical issues make the problem more suited to conventional supercomputers - but I am thinking about it.
Click here to set up BOINC framework and select projects + general info
If you have any problems post your question at the bottom of this thread or check here http://climateapps2.oerc.ox.ac.uk/cpdnboinc/quick_faq.php
Click here to see the list of members in the OW team ClimatePrediction.net stats for OW team. You get credits for donating your excess computer capacity. These don't buy you anything but satisfaction ;D. The more time you donate and the more powerful your computer, the more credits you accumulate.
In addition to the Climateprediction.net project, BOINC hosts a number of other distributed computing projects. See Choosing BOINC projects for more information. The following table shows the different projects the OW team members are running on their computers. CPDN accounts for almost 40% of our credits. You might consider also running the SETI project (search for extra terrestial intelligence) or MilkyWay in case the earth becomes uninhabitable for humans. This is a long shot, of course. ;D
Notes:
- Even if Climateprediction.net is your main interest, you might want to have another project or two to run when CPDN doesn't have any tasks available.
- If Climateprediction.net projects are too demanding for your computer (they are not generally recommended for laptops) try another project! You will still earn credit for the OW team
