A feature model of coupling technologies for Earth System Models

Couplers that link together two or more numerical simulations are well-known abstractions in the Earth System Modeling (ESM) community. In the past decade, reusable software assets have emerged to facilitate scientists in implementing couplers. While there is a large amount of overlap in the features supported by software coupling technologies, their implementations differ significantly in terms of both functional and non-functional properties. Using a domain analysis method called feature analysis, we explore the spectrum of features supported by coupling technologies used to build today's production ESMs.