Hackathon

The nextGEMS schedule includes two phases, Development and Production, aided with Development Hackathons and Knowledge Coproduction. At the hackathons, the nextGEMS community comes together with stakeholders from the renewable energy, marine ecosystems and fisheries sectors, as well as partners from associated projects.

Hackathons are communal exploration, analysis and development activities – all various forms of ‘hacking’. They prioritize working together over lecturing one another. Hackathons build on experiences gained from the DYAMOND initiative, which enabled the project to involve a large international community in the analysis of the model output. They also have the advantage that, if necessary, they can be readily adapted to a virtual environment.

During the development phase of the project, hackathons were set up along three development cycles to continuously improve the ICON and IFS models.
The focus of the application phase, however, lies on working with the data resulting from these improved models. During the different hackathons, the data is applied to the sectors of costal marine ecosystems and fishieries, hazards (e.g. wildfires and heavy precipitation) and renewable energy.

Below you will find some information about the individual hacking events that have taken place over the last years. Further visual material in the form of pictures and short videos can be found in our media library.

Application Phase

km-scale Hackathon

Hamburg, 4th – 8th March, 2024

This event introduced a new aera of hackathons. The models that were created and tested in the development phase, are now applied to different contexts in order to coproduce knowledge with data experts, modellers and researchers from different backgrounds.

The km-scale Hackathon was co-organized by the three climate science projects EERIE, WarmWorld, and nextGEMS and welcomed over 130 professionals from different scientific backgrounds, levels of expertise, diverse nationalities and a variety of institutions.

Participants were creating valuable output while hacking and got some inspiring input by talks and keynotes throughout the week.

On the first day, Eulàlia Baulenas explained what is needed to transform knowledge created in climate science into tangible actions and scientists Rohit Gosh and Dian Putrasaham shared the current state of the Earth System Models used in the EERIE project. Meteorologist Daniela Jacob held a key note about the challenges posed by climate change, affecting the lives of all of us and how the Earth Visualisation Enging (EVE) and the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) could be one step towards an international, joint approach to address and tackle these difficult times ahead. 

A second key note was delivered by Sarah Kang, the Climate Physics Director at MPI, on Wednesday evening. She presented her work on understanding the physical processes driving observed, unexplained cooling trends in the tropical Pacific.

Additionally, Daniel Klocke talked about the Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic Weather and Climate Model (better known as ICON), used by all three of the organizing projects. He introduced some of the aspects of the model that were improved since the last Hackathon and gave an idea about which challenges still need to be combated in the near future. Similarly, Thomas Rackow updated the participants on the improvements of the Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) used in the nextGEMS project.

As a little treat, special side events were organized. These included a communal dinner, a world café, trips to the Wind Tunnel at the University of Hamburg and the DKRZ supercomputer Levante and a short Yoga-session to refresh the participants bodies and minds.

The closing session on Friday was used by the thematic groups to share their observations, analysis, challenges, and suggestions. Participants also engaged in a discussion about their opinions or concerns regarding the Earth System Models, future publications, and possible collaborations between different projects. This day was particularly special due to it coinciding with the International Women’s Day on March 8th, opening up the opportunity to especially celebrate the achievements of our female scientists, organizers and supporters.