Model Atlas of the Earth (M@TE): advancing the interoperability of digital twins

The field of numerical modeling of Earth’s systems is rapidly growing and it is instrumental for addressing the current environmental crisis. Such models often require specialized computational resources (HPC), can take days-to-weeks to run, and produce large volumes of heterogeneous output data. The lack of curation of these numerical models and community standards hinders our ability to access, interpret and build on published numerical models. Here, we present a first-of-its-kind open science framework that aims to establish a community practice to increase the usefulness of numerical modeling outputs and leverage computational resources. M@TE provides a digital platform that encapsulates the entire model development process: from setup, to model output, and analysis. This supports discovery, data preservation, reproducibility, and reuse, with flexibility for users with different levels of expertise. M@TE has a human-browsable, machine-searchable, user-friendly front end (https://mate.science/ ), and a back-end GitHub organization (https://github.com/ModelAtlasofTheEarth) and model output repository targeted to expert users. Contributions to M@TE are handled by GitHub automation workflows that guide contributors through the process of documenting their models, ensuring that they meet community standards, validating metadata and creating DOIs.  M@TE provides a platform for a much wider appreciation of Earth processes and numerical modeling, particularly to industry stakeholders, professional geoscientists and educators. Furthermore, M@te is creating a single platform that will advance the interoperability of digital twins required to address the current environmental crisis.