“Until now, the most advanced climate models have mostly been available to researchers in the wealthiest countries.

New program will see Amazon Web Services’ advanced cloud technologies host 30 climate model simulations and make them available to researchers around the globe….

The resulting free, open access dataset will allow research teams internationally to skirt one of the major barriers to specialized climate modeling, even for those who have the computing capacity to make it happen: cost. Wanser said running the 30 simultaneous simulations would normally cost roughly $700,000, and take two months to run. 

The AWS program will cover all costs associated with hosting and sharing data from the cloud, and accessing and downloading it will be free. Grants will be available to users who choose to analyze or run additional models on AWS.”