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The European Geophysical Union’s General Assembly in 2023 (EGU23) took place in Vienna at the end of April. EGU23 welcomed over 15,000 in-person attendees from 107 countries with over 1400 people also joining online.
CMIP was well represented in submitted abstracts, featuring in 50 presentations and 12 sessions. Four members of our governing panels and four members of the International Project Office (IPO) were also able to attend. The IPO Director, Eleanor O’Rourke welcomed the opportunity to be at EGU23,
“EGU23 offered a great opportunity to interact in person with the wider CMIP and climate science community.”
Eleanor O’Rourke, Director of the CMIP International Project Office
The IPO was delighted to host two Townhalls during the week, and four informal drop-in sessions with over 100 attendees. Eleanor O’Rourke led the sessions alongside Helene Hewitt (CMIP Panel co-chair), Julie Arblaster (CMIP Panel member), Martina Stockhause (WGCM Infrastructure Panel member, Data Citation Task Team co-lead), and Birgit Hassler (Model Benchmarking Task Team co-lead).
The first Townhall – ‘Co-creating the future CMIP’ – included discussion on the scientific and infrastructure priorities for CMIP7. The second Townhall – ‘Early Career Researchers’ (ECRs) reflections from CMIP’ – was designed to give ECRs the chance to feedback on their CMIP6 experiences and highlight improvements to be addressed in the planning of future CMIP activities. Guest contributor, Marisol Osman, provided perspectives from the Young Earth System Scientists community closing on the need to engage more ECRs in leadership roles.
In our ECR Townhall, Helene Hewitt launched “Fresh Eyes on CMIP” – a new working group for ECRs, designed to directly integrate their voices into the CMIP design and governance.
“We see this group as providing invaluable insight into the generation, access, and analysis of CMIP data. We want to improve our ways of working by promoting inclusivity and diversity and ensuring greater representation of ECR voices in the future CMIP. It’s so important when we’re looking to solve big problems in climate science that we have everyone’s voice at the table.”
Helene Hewitt, CMIP Panel Co-Chair
The first round of Fresh Eyes on CMIP applications will open on Tuesday 2nd May at 08:00 UTC.
EGU23 was also an excellent opportunity to start conversations on making the future CMIP more sustainable through careful consideration of our emissions. The discussion forum on Slido for suggestions to reduce CMIP’s emissions, used in the Townhalls, will remain open for the foreseeable future. If you have any ideas, please follow this link to contribute to the discussion.
During the conference, the IPO held a social lunch to encourage networking and discussion about CMIP as well as a series of lunch time themed drop-ins at the European Space Agency’s (ESA), the host institution of the CMIP IPO, stand. The drop-in sessions were led by CMIP Panel and WIP members as well as guest speakers. The session on Tuesday proved particularly popular with a talk and discussion session led by Stefan Sobolowski (NORCE Research), on CMIP Downscaling in EURO-CORDEX, the European branch of the international CORDEX initiative.
As EGU23 comes to a close, Eleanor O’Rourke comments:
“Our events were filled with enthusiasm for CMIP but also importantly offered an open platform for some important issues, questions, and highly constructive feedback to be raised. This included challenges around data access and documentation and also the important scientific questions to be addressed by the future CMIP. The IPO team was also delighted to hear the very positive feedback on its support and facilitation of the CMIP community.”
Eleanor O’Rourke, Director of the CMIP International Project Office
Notes:
World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
WCRP is an international programme that helps to coordinate global climate research. WCRP Sponsor Organizations are the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO and the International Science Council (ISC).
WCRP initiated the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) in 1995. CMIP provides climate projections that support essential WCRP activities and thereby climate science worldwide, decision-makers and policy-makers communities, in its objective to understand past, present, and future climate changes arising from natural, unforced variability or in response to changes in radiative forcing in a multi-model context
EURO CORDEX
EURO-CORDEX is the European branch of the international Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) initiative, which is a program sponsored by the World Climate Research Program (WRCP) to organize an internationally coordinated framework to produce improved regional climate change projections for all land regions world-wide. See https://www.euro-cordex.net/ .
European Space Agency (ESA)
ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
ESA has 22 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia and Lithuania are Associate Members.ESA has established formal cooperation with four Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement.
The CMIP IPO is being hosted by the European Space Agency for a term of 5 years from 01 March 2021 – 28 February 2026. The European Space Agency (ESA) provides Europe’s gateway to space.
Learn more at https://www.esa.int/
Young Earth System Scientists community (YESS)
YESS is an interdisciplinary early career scientists network, unifies international and multidisciplinary early career scientists in a powerful network, providing a voice and leverage for a better future to serve society. Find out about the network’s latest developments and its connections with WCRP: https://www.wcrp-climate.org/images/capacity_development/YESS_activities.pdf
