UK Earth System Modelling News
July 2020
Welcome to UK Earth System Model (UKESM) News from the Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme (JWCRP).
The UK Earth system modelling project is a joint venture between the Met Office and the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) to develop and apply a world-leading Earth System Model.
If you like to get in touch, please email us at ukesm@ncas.ac.uk
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Atmospheric Blocking and Greenland melt
by Victoria Lee, Robin S. Smith, Tony Payne
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First Analysis of ScenarioMIP Projections from UKESM1 in the Context of Global Warming Thresholds
by Ranjini Swaminathan, Colin Jones, Robert Parker, Douglas Kelley, Jeremy Walton
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3D visualization of CMIP6 data
by Jeremy Walton.
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Recent Events
UKESM – LTSM General Assembly, Online – 16-17 June 2020
The 2020 UKESM General Assembly went fully online for our two day meeting. Whilst we may have missed out on meeting face-to-face this year, it did mean that we had between 80 to over 100 participants in the sessions – from as far as New Zealand, Australia and South Korea. Day 1 included: a review of the progress of the UKESM project over the past year (Colin Jones & UKESM team), the 2nd NERC Long Term Science Multi Centre (LTSM) programme (Rowan Sutton) and policy related science talks
An international perspective on Earth system modelling was provided by Olivier Boucher (IPSL) and Jean-François Lamarque (NCAR/CESM). Day 1 was rounded off by a summary by Jane Mulcahy (UKESM). Most of Day 2 was dedicated to short science talks related to UKESM developments or using the generated datasets in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs). 20 short talks were given by a mixture of the UKESM team, collaborators and researchers in other institutions. A full list is available at the link below. Further details, slides and a link to recordings of all the sessions on YouTube can be found on our website: https://ukesm.ac.uk/ukesm-general-assembly-16-17-june-2020/ |
CMIP6 Analysis Seminars – Online in April and May 2020
Five online seminars were held over the 20, 21 April & 15 May involving 25 scientists presenting their work on the analysis of CMIP6 simulations. We were particularly pleased to involve a number of Early Career Scientists in the programme of talks. The full list of presentations and slides are available for each session at: https://ukesm.ac.uk/cmip6/uk-cmip6-analysis-workshop-20-21-april-2020-met-office-exeter/ |
Publications
UKESM1 in the research literature
The Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems has a special issue on: The UK Earth System Models for CMIP6. Recent updates to this issue include:
In Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics online journal:
Papers coming soon:
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News
July 2020 – I’m A Scientist, Stay At Home
by Andrew Yool Since 2010, “I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here” has run an annual fortnight of online outreach events in which Taking part in this summer’s events has been Andrew Yool, one of UKESM1’s marine biogeochemists. He joined the coding, environment and “Summer 2020” zones of the event, and has taken part in a number of chatroom sessions. In each of these, around 10-15 scientists took part in fast and furious conversations sparked by questions from up to 30 students. Typically these questions are posed by students at particular scientists (of whom, potted biographies are available), but many are open to @all for anyone to answer. Questions can be broken out into separate chat threads for scientists and students alike to follow-up on and dig deeper. As well as questions on particular science topics, many questions touch on why people became scientists, what it’s like to be a scientist day-to-day, and how students can make science their career. During his time in the chatrooms so far, Andrew has been asked questions about how he models plankton in UKESM1, how the ocean’s carbon cycle works, and what nutrient cycles are. He has also fielded questions on topics as wide ranging as why cats eyes are reflective, why we produce toxic waste, and why hearing aids are not what animals need to understand human language. On the chatrooms, he remarked, “Although frenetic at times, the enthusiasm from the students is very infectious, and it’s a real buzz to be able to help students with their questions – I’d definitely recommend taking part to my colleagues”. “I’m A Scientist, Stay At Home” continues to the end of July 2020. Andrew Yool is a researcher at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. Weblinks: https://coding20.imascientist.org.uk/ https://environment20.imascientist.org.uk/ |
United Kingdom Chemistry and Aerosol (UKCA) model – Community Survey
The United Kingdom Chemistry and Aerosol (UKCA) model is a widely used atmospheric composition model. UKCA is the composition model of choice in UKESM. The UKCA user community has grown significantly over time necessitating a more robust management structure. To respond to this need the UKCA Science Management Group (SMG) has been created. Currently, the SMG is drawing up a new strategy to guide science and development for the next few years. However, the SMG strongly feels that the forthcoming UKCA science and development strategy should reflect the interests and needs of the community rather than the opinions of its management alone. Therefore, the SMG needs to understand better those needs and priorities of the community. We have designed a community survey and we ask you all for your help. Please follow the link to the survey below or go to the UKCA website (https://www.ukca.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/UKCA) and follow the link on the landing page. Link to the survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe6fFb3lnSTyEXv5oxPFp3wTkvG8FI6duQYYWWvnaoMGdDrNA/viewform?usp=send_form |
![]() The ESGF user feedback survey 2020 has been launched. This infrastructure-focused survey aims to collect feedback from a broad range of ESGF users, including the broad community of CMIP data users and stakeholders. The results of the survey will focus the development priorities for the next-generation ESGF software stack and website, along with the ESGF computing capabilities to be launched soon alongside the data. This infrastructure-focused survey is being led by the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) in collaboration IS-ENES with the WCRP WGCM Infrastructure Panel to “take the temperature” of how CMIP data contributors, users, and stakeholders are working with ESGF to search, access and download data. We expect another science-focused survey led by the CMIP panel and focused on the possible design of CMIP7 will follow in a number of months. The survey will take 10-15 minutes of your time, and is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3RZFPG7 We appreciate it if you can respond before Monday 20th August 2020. We invite you to forward the details far and wide so that we can collate the most representative feedback for ESGF’s broad contributor and user communities. ESGF |
Team News
Recent additions to the UKESM Core Group:
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