The natESM Journey for Improving Software Quality in Earth System Modelling

natESM is a project that brings together German resources to develop a seamless, multiscale Earth System Modelling framework that can serve multiple purposes. This system is composed of several independent and diverse software models from the community, each addressing different parts of the Earth system. Given the variety of programming languages, model sizes and software architectures involved, as well as different experience among the responsible model developers, challenges arise in portability, performance and software quality. 

A key part of the natESM approach is the technical support to model developers provided by Research Software Engineers (RSEs). Their work focuses not only on integration, portability and performance, but also on systematically improving software quality within and across model components. This talk will outline the progress made so far, highlight lessons learned from the RSE-scientist collaborations, and present our future plans for assessing and enhancing software quality. The experiences and methods developed in natESM might serve as an example for improving software sustainability in Earth System Modeling more broadly.