Eurohack 2020: Scientific GPU programming hackathon

Between September 21 and 30, 2020, the Swiss Supercomputing Centre CSCS hosted the sixth GPU programming hackathon “Eurohack 2020” – if only in a virtual format due to the pandemic. Changing hardware architectures require model codes to be adapted to these new architectures. More and more supercomputers, like e.g. Piz Daint at CSCS, are based on architectures employing graphics processors (GPUs) as accelerators.

CLICCS Retreat 2020

On September 30 and October 1, the second annual retreat of the cluster of excellence CLICCS took place at Hamburg University – albeit only in a virtual format due to the pandemic.

Climate talk at the Hamburger Klimawoche

According to the motto "The climate needs you" between September 20 and 27, 2020, the Climate Week in Hamburg (Hamburger Klimawoche) offers about 220 events - including a climate talk with scientists from the DKRZ, the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS) and the Max- Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M). On the Hamburg Rathausmarkt, an imposing event roof for a central main stage and an information area offers all interested visitors and experts protection from wind and weather and at the same time ensures the best possible protection against corona infections when flooded with air.

RCEMIP Data in the Cloud

DKRZ hosts more than 30 Terabyte of the RCEMIP atmospheric model dataset for reuse by the global scientific community. Simulation output of more than 30 different atmospheric models is freely available via the DKRZ cloud and forms the basis of the recently published RCEMIP overview paper.

Tech Talks: A new series of virtual talks at DKRZ

On September, 1st, 2020, DKRZ will start Tech Talks a series of virtual talks which will present the services of DKRZ. The talks will cover technical aspects of the use of our compute systems as well as procedures such as compute time applications and will introduce different teams relevant to DKRZ such as our machine learning specialists. It will also provide a forum for questions and answers of our DKRZ users.

Central Evaluation System for Climate eXtremes Workshop

ClimXtreme Central Evaluation System (XCES), hosted at DKRZ’ supercomputing system Mistral, is a framework that provides the infrastructure for the analysis of climate data for all members of the ClimXtreme project. This project is a multi-institutional effort within framework programm FONA3 that aims to generate climate knowledge to contribute with an improved assessment of human-impacted climate extremes and damage-related extreme weather events in Central Europe.

Hot off the press: The DKRZ yearbook 2018-19

The DKRZ yearbook 2018-2019 was published in August 2020. It shows a cross-section of the work at the DKRZ, summarizes the results of important completed projects and reports on the status of ongoing and newly started projects.

Atos boosts supercomputing performance at German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) by 5 with new BullSequana

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, has signed a new five-year contract with the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) to supply a supercomputer based on its latest BullSequana XH2000 technology to increase DKRZ’s computing power by 5, compared to the currently operating high-performance computer “Mistral”, which was provided by Atos in 2015. The new systems will be available at the DKRZ from mid-2021.

Virtual 6th ENES HPC Workshop and ESiWACE2 annual meeting

From 25 to 29 May, 2020, DKRZ hosted the 6th HPC workshop of the European Network for Earth System Modelling (ENES) as a virtual event within the framework of ESiWACE2, the Centre of Excellence in Simulation of Weather and Climate in Europe.

Student Cluster Competition at ISC'20

Due to the current corona pandemic, the ISC'20 (International Supercomputing High Performance) will take place from June 22nd to 25th,2020, as a virtual conference. Thus, also the student cluster competition (SCC), which is traditionally held at the ISC, will take place in remote form as an online competition.

New YouTube video about the project DYAMOND++ online

DKRZ has published a new 180-degrees-VR video on its YouTube channel about the project DYAMOND++ on storm-resolving climate and atmosphere models. The short film describes the development of the project: from low-resolution climate models used in the past to high-resolution regional setups to study clouds and cloud formation processes. In addition to interviews with some of the scientific minds behind the project, visualizations of their work illustrate the progress made with this new generation of storm-resolving models.

S4F podcast: A talk with Michael Böttinger

For the Scientists for Future podcast, Josephine Tröger and Christophe Cauet speak to scientists about climate change, sustainability and a future worth living. In the current download "Episode #2 - German Climate Computing Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, DKRZ)" of the Scientists for Future podcast, Michael Böttinger reports on climate modeling, climate change and the visualization of climate data and on how the DKRZ - as a competent partner - supports climate researchers in Germany in their work.

Data collections for climate research available at DKRZ

DKRZ provides the available ERA5 data as well as core data sets from well-known internationally Coordinated Model Intercomparison Projects such as CMIP or CORDEX for easy access and efficient processing on the parallel file system. As a result, DKRZ users do not need to transfer and store these data collections by themselves - a benefit that might influence the upcoming requests for DKRZ resources.

Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning: DKRZ beim meetup.ai in the HafenCity

The group Artificial Intelligence (AI) of the Meetup international platform in Hamburg “meetup.ai” organised the “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning” [1] event on February, 4, 2020. On the look for earth system science experts, the organisers invited with Maria Moreno de Castro and Karsten Peters two DKRZ colleagues for a keynote presentation.

PalMod: Datamanagement workshop at DKRZ

The PalMod2 Data Management Plan (DMP) workshop was organised and hosted by DKRZ on February, 11, 2020. At the workshop, about 30 scientists and IT-experts participated in fruitful discussions about research data management (RDM) in PalMod2, the motivation behind the compilation of DMPs and organisational aspects around RDM.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning: Kick-off workshop at DKRZ

The Helmholtz Association has initiated the platform Helmholtz Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Unit (HAICU) that develops, implements and disseminates new applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for the analysis of complex systems in the areas of energy, materials, information, logistics, climate and health.

Establishment of an ML research group at DKRZ

The rapid development of machine learning (ML) as one of the methods of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important in climate science and at the DKRZ. With the new research group "Climate Informatics and Technologies", headed by Dr. Christopher Kadow, DKRZ will create a special interface between climate and AI/ML research.

SC'19: Mistral on rank 80th on the TOP500 list

During the Supercomputing Conference (SC'19), the 54th edition of the TOP500 list was released on November, 19th, in Denver/US. Even after four years of operation, the DKRZ supercomputer Mistral achieved a respectable 80th rank. Looking at the storage capacity of the data centers, Mistral ranks fourth worldwide.

Increasing energy efficiency through waste heat recovery

The DKRZ operates one of the most efficient computing centers worldwide in the world to create climate simulations as environmentally friendly as possible. Energy efficiency has been further increased by using the heat generated by the Mistral high-performance computer to heat neighboring buildings.

Visualization spotlight at the IEEE Vis in Vancouver / Canada

Marc Rautenhaus of the Regional Computing Center of the University of Hamburg (RRZ) and Michael Böttinger of DKRZ have co-jointly invited the conference participants of the international visualization conference IEEE Vis2019 in Vancouver to a 90-minutes lasting "Application Spotlight" session on "Visualization in Meteorology & Climate Sciences: Recent Research & Open Challenges".

MONSOON: a German-Chinese cooperation

The BMBF-funded project MONSOON-2.0 is a cooperation of the German partners, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DKRZ and DLR, with the China Meteorological Administration and the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi / China. The project will start on November, 25th and 26th, 2019, with a kick-off meeting in Hamburg.

New film introduces ESiWACE

A new film introduces the EU-funded "Centre of Excellence in Simulation of Weather and Climate in Europe (ESiWACE)" that is coordinated by DKRZ.

Interactive web-visualization of IPCC scenario simulations

The new interactive web visualization platform www.dkrz.de/webvis enables internet users to explore interactively and visually possible future climate changes using their web browsers. The platform displays simulated climate changes from scenario simulations on a rotatable and scalable virtual globe. To date, the data available for visualization include simulated changes in temperature and precipitation over time. For a direct comparison, different scenarios or seasons can be displayed side by side. The data originate from simulations with the earth system model MPI-ESM carried out with respect to the fifth IPCC assessment report.