Easy Gems is an online platform that consolidates information on high-resolution climate simulations produced by the nextGEMS project and other European initiatives, such as European Eddy-Rich ESMs (EERIE), WarmWorld, and the DYAMOND initiative. Developed by the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), this platform serves as a repository of best practices and a comprehensive guide to create climate models. According to DKRZ Senior Scientist Florian Ziemen, one of the key aspects behind the creation of Easy Gems was “the idea was to have one place where you can find everything you need when you want to analyze high-resolution simulations.”

At the same time, the goal was to build something that was not tied strictly to a single project, thereby ensuring the sustainability of the platform and its data even after individual projects conclude. This approach prevents the platform from ending up in the „website dumpster,“ Ziemen explained. As a result, Easy Gems is designed to extend beyond individual projects by offering access to all simulation data—or „simulation gems“—hosted at DKRZ, while also functioning as a how-to resource or e-book.

Since nextGEMS drives the development of two European storm-resolving Earth-system models — the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS) and the Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic Weather and Climate Model (ICON) — Easy Gems includes details on three development cycles of these Earth System Models, as well as some pre-final simulations. This encompasses simulations at various horizontal resolutions and evolving model configurations.

Additionally, the platform offers guidance on logging data, plotting data, and applying a variety of best practices in data processing. It is entirely user-driven, meaning that the Easy Gems community actively contributes and keeps the content up-to-date. Beyond serving as a guide, the platform acts as a comprehensive documentation tool for the project, providing access to project outputs that are further illustrated and explained.

The platform is organized into three main sections: Simulations, Processing, and Contribute. The Simulations section provides detailed information on the simulations currently available, while the Processing section offers tips and example scripts for data handling. Finally, the Contribute section explains how users can collaborate and become part of this community-driven effort.

Easy Gems encourages contributions from anyone, regardless of their background. Contributions can range from reporting errors and requesting additional articles to suggesting clearer descriptions or improved illustrations. To contribute and interact with Easy Gems, users need a DKRZ account. Additionally, additions require approval from other members of the community to ensure that the input is correct and avoid redundancies. Currently, there are 3,260 registered accounts, with approximately 490 users granted access to all the data hosted on the platform.

If you’re interested, feel free to check out Easy Gems here!

18 students and 7 professors from the University of Madrid started the month April with a weekend-hackathon. In two ways, they were testing new terrain. On the one hand, the students used ICON simulation output from our most recent nextGEMS simulations with 10.5 simulated months at 5km resolution, leading to 522 TB on disk. On the other hand, they analyzed this huge amount of data on DKRZ’s new supercomputer Levante.
Accepting the challenges, the students worked in small groups on a variety of topics ranging from the Madden-Julian Oscillation in the tropics to extratropical climate and from stratospheric biases high up in the atmosphere, passing by orographic-induced weather phenomena, all the way down to ocean-atmosphere interactions. Their contribution will help us to further shape the upcoming model development by investigating remaining biases and defining features that are well captured by the model.

A big thanks to the UCM professors for making this happen und to everyone participating for diving into the nextGEMS world and adding a piece to the bigger puzzle of understanding global storm-resolving simulations!