Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NextGEMS (Next Generation Earth Modelling Systems)
Reporting period: 2021-09-01 to 2023-04-30
A great shift in societal expectations of climate science is underway. nextGEMS anticipated and responds to this shift, which contributes to making it an exceptionally innovative and exciting project, for many of us the most exciting project ever. The great shift arises from the confluence of two facts. One is that the question as to whether climate change is real, and if humans are responsible, has been answered and the answer has become broadly accepted. The other is that the changes with warming are unfolding around us. These facts mean that demand to resolve questions of knowledge is taking a back seat to the demand for the provision of information, and means for verifying it. Knowledge production will always be vital, but the unfolding of climate change, and the need to act, means that information provision has gained new urgency. A more practical example is that for adapting regional water systems to a warming world it will be necessary to anticipate if summer rains over a given watershed will shift to winter rains. Understanding why this is happening won’t always be possible or even necessary to guide action.
The scientific gap that nextGEMS addresses is that the tools scientists developed to answer the big questions, as to whether Earth is warming and if humans are responsible, did not need regional accuracy and local granularity. On the contrary, confidence in the answers of the old tools benefited from their lack of regional precision. The fact that models differing in their regional detail gave the same global answer, somehow increases confidence in that answer being robust, and arising from very basic processes. A lack of regional fidelity, however, becomes a problem when one considers how to adapt to the regional manifestations of warming. In addition, the lack of local granularity means that whatever information is provided, is difficult to translate into impacts and actions. In nextGEMS a new generation of models that not only have local granularity but also offer the promise of regional fidelity is being prototyped. As society is increasingly confronted with the reality of climate change, it is looking to climate science to develop the tools needed to guide action and protect lives and livelihoods the world over, nextGEMS responds to this need.
The importance of nextGEMS is highlighted by the forces it is helping set in motion. The Climate Adaptation Digital Twins of the Destination Earth project is being developed around the two prototype storm-and-eddy resolving (SR-ESMs) models being developed within nextGEMS. A large German National Project (WarmWorld) takes the nextGEMS development as its impetus for new workflows, to refactor and optimize the two models being developed in nextGEMS. Countless new EU projects are being based on the nextGEMS modeling capabilities, from a major new field campaign in the tropical Atlantic planned for summer 2024, to a host of proposed Horizon Europe Projects.
nextGEMS three objectives are to:
O1: prototype two SR-ESMs for applications
O2: use these prototypes to advance the science
O3: engage new communities in their use
The first and third objective form the underpinning of the new information systems; the second objective will help develop confidence in the extent and limits of their utility. Twenty months into the project we have made outstanding progress in addressing the first and third objective, and work has begun on the second objective.
The scientific gap that nextGEMS addresses is that the tools scientists developed to answer the big questions, as to whether Earth is warming and if humans are responsible, did not need regional accuracy and local granularity. On the contrary, confidence in the answers of the old tools benefited from their lack of regional precision. The fact that models differing in their regional detail gave the same global answer, somehow increases confidence in that answer being robust, and arising from very basic processes. A lack of regional fidelity, however, becomes a problem when one considers how to adapt to the regional manifestations of warming. In addition, the lack of local granularity means that whatever information is provided, is difficult to translate into impacts and actions. In nextGEMS a new generation of models that not only have local granularity but also offer the promise of regional fidelity is being prototyped. As society is increasingly confronted with the reality of climate change, it is looking to climate science to develop the tools needed to guide action and protect lives and livelihoods the world over, nextGEMS responds to this need.
The importance of nextGEMS is highlighted by the forces it is helping set in motion. The Climate Adaptation Digital Twins of the Destination Earth project is being developed around the two prototype storm-and-eddy resolving (SR-ESMs) models being developed within nextGEMS. A large German National Project (WarmWorld) takes the nextGEMS development as its impetus for new workflows, to refactor and optimize the two models being developed in nextGEMS. Countless new EU projects are being based on the nextGEMS modeling capabilities, from a major new field campaign in the tropical Atlantic planned for summer 2024, to a host of proposed Horizon Europe Projects.
nextGEMS three objectives are to:
O1: prototype two SR-ESMs for applications
O2: use these prototypes to advance the science
O3: engage new communities in their use
The first and third objective form the underpinning of the new information systems; the second objective will help develop confidence in the extent and limits of their utility. Twenty months into the project we have made outstanding progress in addressing the first and third objective, and work has begun on the second objective.
Twenty months into the project we have performed stable decadal scale coupled simulations with both models, the IFS-FESOM and ICON, we have prototyped the ability to link these to different Earth system components. Prior to nextGEMS no one had ever performed multi-annual coupled storm-and-eddy-resolving simulations, in less than twenty months we have created two models that can be run for decades, on scales as fine as 2.5 km, or even finer, and which incorporate major elements of Earth-system complexity. To get to this point many problems were identified and had to be solved in the more parameterized implementations of these same models. And while we still hope to resolve a few remaining issues before launching the large production simulations, the project has already addressed many aspects of its first objective.
In these twenty months we have pioneered novel workflows that are enabling a much broader community of users to interact with model output. For efficient data management, standardized outputs and naming conventions were agreed on. The easy.gems book has been developed as a community resource, in which examples of new analysis approaches are introduced to accelerate the more sophisticated use of the nextGEMS data. An example is how the new workflows allow hundreds of distributed point observations to be sub-sampled within the simulations using just a few lines of python.
nextGEMS' pioneering use of Hackathons, its integration of the Impact group, and its use of videos and Science Explainers have also been very effective in engaging both, the project participants and those outside the project, including the private sector. Hackathons were extremely effective at building the nextGEMS community. Unlike many past projects, where small subsets of the project personnel work largely in isolation to perform specific tasks, nextGEMS – primarily through its Hackathons – has been successful in building new communities to work together. Storms & Science, a virtual weekly meeting run by nextGEMS postdocs, has helped sustain project momentum.
In these twenty months we have pioneered novel workflows that are enabling a much broader community of users to interact with model output. For efficient data management, standardized outputs and naming conventions were agreed on. The easy.gems book has been developed as a community resource, in which examples of new analysis approaches are introduced to accelerate the more sophisticated use of the nextGEMS data. An example is how the new workflows allow hundreds of distributed point observations to be sub-sampled within the simulations using just a few lines of python.
nextGEMS' pioneering use of Hackathons, its integration of the Impact group, and its use of videos and Science Explainers have also been very effective in engaging both, the project participants and those outside the project, including the private sector. Hackathons were extremely effective at building the nextGEMS community. Unlike many past projects, where small subsets of the project personnel work largely in isolation to perform specific tasks, nextGEMS – primarily through its Hackathons – has been successful in building new communities to work together. Storms & Science, a virtual weekly meeting run by nextGEMS postdocs, has helped sustain project momentum.
When nextGEMS comes to an end, we expect to have:
• demonstrated an ability to stably run global coupled Earth system models for decades on horizontal grids between 2.5 km to 5.0 km.
• developed and prototyped the workflows for the use of such models in applications.
• documented robust improvements and lingering biases in the climatology that emerge at such scales and the degree of regional precision in their representation of regional climate.
• provided the first glimpse of how a representation of km-scale processes in the atmosphere, ocean, and in land surface, influence the climate system.
• illustrated the potential for further developing this new class of models to address the needs of users.
Achievements which go beyond the specific objectives of nextGEMS. Which can happen in part thanks to synergies with other projects that nextGEMS has helped incubate.
From a purely scientific perspective we expect to have
• provided the first tests of the hypothesis that storm-resolving models can well represent the mean tropical climate and its variability given a proper representation of atmospheric cloud radiative forcing using a coupled model.
• demonstrated the extent to which convective organization influences extreme rainfall as well as the atmospheric radiation budget.
• understood whether atmospheric moist convection couples fundamentally differently to the land surface and its implications for presumed critical thresholds in terrestrial ecosystems.
• provided the first quantification of climate sensitivity and aerosol effective radiative forcing from models that account for contributions from convective organization and convective scale processes.
Much of this work will be aided by a very large allocation of computer time on Europe’s largest pre-exascale machine (LUMI).
• demonstrated an ability to stably run global coupled Earth system models for decades on horizontal grids between 2.5 km to 5.0 km.
• developed and prototyped the workflows for the use of such models in applications.
• documented robust improvements and lingering biases in the climatology that emerge at such scales and the degree of regional precision in their representation of regional climate.
• provided the first glimpse of how a representation of km-scale processes in the atmosphere, ocean, and in land surface, influence the climate system.
• illustrated the potential for further developing this new class of models to address the needs of users.
Achievements which go beyond the specific objectives of nextGEMS. Which can happen in part thanks to synergies with other projects that nextGEMS has helped incubate.
From a purely scientific perspective we expect to have
• provided the first tests of the hypothesis that storm-resolving models can well represent the mean tropical climate and its variability given a proper representation of atmospheric cloud radiative forcing using a coupled model.
• demonstrated the extent to which convective organization influences extreme rainfall as well as the atmospheric radiation budget.
• understood whether atmospheric moist convection couples fundamentally differently to the land surface and its implications for presumed critical thresholds in terrestrial ecosystems.
• provided the first quantification of climate sensitivity and aerosol effective radiative forcing from models that account for contributions from convective organization and convective scale processes.
Much of this work will be aided by a very large allocation of computer time on Europe’s largest pre-exascale machine (LUMI).