As part of the nextGEMS production stage for our high-resolution Earth system simulations, a new hackathon edition has been launched. The fifth nextGEMS hackathon is currently taking place in the central Netherlands, in the city of Wageningen, renowned for its university and vibrant student life.
From October 14th to 18th, 2024, more than 80 scientists, researchers, students, and other representatives from across Europe, North America and East Asia gather for the „Hazard Hackathon“ at Wageningen University. Here, they can collaborate, network, and tackle pressing challenges related to fire weather, precipitation, urban heat extremes, and more.
On the first day, Chiel Van Heerwaarden, a researcher and co-organizer from Wageningen University, kicked off the event with a welcoming speech and general information for the week to come. Following, scientists Dyvia Praturi from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology and Xabier Pedruzo from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) provided updates on the available ICON and IFS Earth system models‘ simulations.
Praturi encouraged participants to seek guidance and answers to their questions about the Easy Gems platform, while Pedruzo highlighted a recently published research paper detailing the advancements in IFS simulations.
During the opening session, Jasper Denissen from ECMWF introduced the audience to the Catchment-based Macro-scale Floodplain (Ca-Ma-Flood) model. He explained how its hydrological forecasts are being used in nextGEMS simulations and mentioned some of the Ca-Ma-Flood output variables that participants can work with, such as river discharge and flooded fractions.
Before the first day concluded with an exciting ice-breaker session that included some delicious local finger food and a round of pool and table tennis, Edgar Dolores-Testillos from the University of Bern presented the innovative structure of this hackathon. Unlike in the previous events, this time participants will have the opportunity to choose from five defined challenges: efficient data handling, fire weather, precipitation and temperature extremes and urban heat, energy production, and a „wild card“ challenge encompassing topics like tropical cyclones and extreme precipitation. Nevertheless, he emphasized that participants are also free to pursue their own or collective interests during the upcoming days of the hacking marathon.
Atmospheric turbulence refers to the irregular, chaotic flow of air in the Earth’s atmosphere. Although the majority of flows in nature are turbulent, our understanding of this phenomena remains surprisingly limited. Moreover, the complex and dynamic nature of atmospheric turbulence within the Earth’s atmosphere poses significant challenges to scientists.
Jakub Nowak and Marta Wacławczyk explain their scientific work on atmospheric turbulence in one of the research videos developed by Latest Thinking. This video is based on the study „Detecting Nonequilibrium States in Atmospheric Turbulence“, in which scientists Holger Siebert and Szymon P. Malinowski contributed as well. The authors shed light on the temporal changes of turbulence and its implications for atmospheric modeling. In fact, before this study, changes of turbulence were only an assumption based on controlled experiments. Specifically, the authors focused on the behavior of turbulence within stratocumulus clouds over the ocean.
Stratocumulus clouds are low-level clouds, varying in color from bright white to dark grey, and are the most common clouds on Earth. They have well-defined bases with varying shades, often featuring gaps but sometimes merging together. Typically, they form from a layer of stratus clouds breaking up and signal an upcoming weather change.
Marta Wacławczyk is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw’s. With a PhD from Gdańsk and a rich background in fluid flow mechanics, she brings extensive expertise in the statistical analysis and modeling of turbulentflows. Jakub Nowak, on the other hand, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warsaw’s. His research, deeply rooted in the properties of turbulence within stratocumulus clouds, reflects his commitment to advancing our understanding of atmospheric dynamics.
Understanding atmospheric turbulence is essential for improving weather prediction models, climate simulations, and aviation safety. Furthermore, by exploring the temporal changes in turbulence within stratocumulus clouds, the work projected in this research video not only advances scientific knowledge, but also holds promise for improving climate modeling and weather prediction.
The first half of 2023 spawned many new papers connected to the nextGEMS project, which you can read more about in our last blog post. In the second half, from July to December 2023, the nextGEMS community added another four publications to this list. These publications put forth new knowledge on the climate system and the improvement of climate models and decision-making processes. Members of the project also made available data generated in the third cycle of model development within nextGEMS.
In one of the papers, Brunner and Sippel investigated how to enhance climate models using statistical and machine learning processes. Their insights are a vital step towards shortening the amount of time needed to evaluate the performance and independence of new climate models.
Climate model genealogy aims at understanding structural dependencies and sampling biases in multi-model ensembles. Dependencies and biases can, for example, occur between different model versions or models developed at the same institution as they partially share computer code, algorithms and parametrization schemes. Kuma, Bender and Jönsson looked into these structural similarities of models used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CIMP), identifying 12 different model families. Their findings suggest that using family and ancestry weighting for independent models in multi-model ensembles could improve data on model uncertainty and reduce bias originating from structural similarities between models of the same model family.
Moum et al. worked on understanding the influence of surface wind stress and shear on diurnal deep cycle turbulence at the equatorial cold tongues. Deep cycle turbulence describes the process of mixing the warmer ocean surface water with the colder water of deeper layers. This process plays an important role in climate regulation, effecting the ocean’s capacity to take up heat from the atmosphere.
The work of Baulenas and Bojovic highlights the potential of eliciting information from high-resolution Earth system models in a participatory process to support decision-making in complex matters. Especially tasks like the development of resilient renewable energy systems could benefit from this approach, as shown by the study conducted in Madrid in May 2023.
Finally, Koldunov et al. released a subset of data generated with the ICON and IFS models throughout the third model development cycle.
A comprehensive compilation of publications associated with the project can be found on the nextGEMS Publications page.
July
August
October
If using our data in a publication, please make sure to use the following sentence in the acknowledgements:
„[XY] was supported by the nextGEMS project under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program (Grant No. 101003470).“
The 5th hackathon of the nextGEMS project is coming up! Join us from 14th to 18th of October 2024 in the dutch town of Wageningen to find out how our models can be applied in the sector of natural hazards.
The event will be organised in cooperation with the Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and the University of Bern and hosted on the WUR campus.
In the spirit of what was written in our proposal, participating scientists, programmers, and other project partners will work in small groups to create new knowledge on a topic. The topics will be related to the four nextGEMS research themes, as well as to natural hazards, such as wildfires and heavy precipitation. We will all explore research questions based on the newest simulations of the IFS and ICON models, identifying bugs and developing improvements. If you haven’t been to a hackathon, have a look at our previous hackathons to get an impression of the atmosphere and collaboration.
If you are interested in participating in the Hackathon, please register here until the 1st of July, 2024.
The event will charge a EUR 150 participation fee. Once your participation is confirmed, you will also receive the instructions for the payment.
Once again, we are also opening a call for stipend applications to support the participation of young scientists with a strong interest in climate science or Earth system informatics. The stipend application deadline is 15th June 2024.
For any additional questions, please refer to the event website or contact the nextGEMS project office.
Where and when: Wageningen University, Netherlands – 14th to 18th October 2024
nextGEMS offers up to 15 stipends for participation in the Hazard Hackathon to support young scientists (at Master and PhD student level) from outside the project.
Application deadline: 15 June, 2024.
-> quicklink to registration & application
nextGEMS is an European project that follows a new approach to climate modelling with global storm-resolving Earth-system Models. The project members meet regularly at hackathons to collaboratively analyse the latest model runs, exchange ideas and develop new ways forward.
We would like to include universities and research groups, especially from regions with less of a tradition in climate science. External participants applying for a stipend will be organized in teams to work on an Application Challenge Problem. This time around, the focus will be on the application of data and climate models in the context of natural hazards. As the Storms & Land theme is inviting us to meet in Wageningen, the main themes are fire weather, (urban) heat extremes, and extreme precipitation. As always, everyone is invited to bring their own subject as well. nextGEMS scientists, as well as experts from the field, will supervise and support the hackathon teams.
If you haven’t been to a hackathon, have a look at past hackathons to get an impression of the atmosphere during our previous meetings.
We welcome young scientists with a strong interest in climate science or Earth system informatics!
Eligibility criteria:
The hackathon participation is free and includes coffee breaks, lunches and a dinner. Additional travel and accommodation costs (incl. breakfast) up to €1000 are available per stipend.
Before applying for a hackathon stipend, please prepare the following documents:
Information on the hackathon, as well as registration details, can be found on the event website.
During the registration, please indicate that you apply for a hackathon stipend. Following the respective check-box, please upload the documents listed above in one single (concatenated) PDF file.
Application deadline is 15 June, 2024.
We will let you know as soon as possile whether we can arrange for your hackathon participation in Wageningen.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with the nextGEMS project office.
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