Earth system and environmental models present the scientist/programmer with multiple challenges in software design, development, and maintenance, overall system integration, and performance. We describe how work in the industrial sector of software engineering—namely component-based software engineering—can be brought to bear to address issues of software complexity. We explain how commercially developed component solutions are inadequate to address the performance needs of the Earth system modeling community. We describe a component-based approach called the Common Component Architecture that has as its goal the creation of a component paradigm that is compatible with the requirements of high-performance computing applications. We outline the relationship and ongoing collaboration between CCA and major Climate/Weather/Ocean community software projects. We present examples of work in progress that uses CCA, and discuss long-term plans for the CCA-climate/weather/ocean collaboration. 1