Hackathon (NCAR, ETH Zurich) and Statistical Method Intercomparison Project on Estimating the Forced Component of Climate Change

[Karen McKinnon]

Dear climate informatics community,

Please consider registering to join us at upcoming hackathons on August 29-31 at NCAR and ETH Zurich. These hackathons are part of a statistical methods intercomparison project (ForceSMIP) aimed at estimating the forced component of climate change from observations. 

Motivated by the importance of identifying the forced response (i.e., the spatiotemporal evolution of climate in response to external forcing such as greenhouse gases, anthropogenic aerosols, volcanoes, land-use change, etc.) from the noise of internal climate variability, the Forced Component Estimation Statistical Method Intercomparison Project (ForceSMIP) will utilize climate model ensembles to develop and assess statistical methods for isolating the forced response from individual realizations of the climate system. These methods will then be applied to observations to produce a community estimate of the forced climate response across a wide range of geophysical fields. The results of this project will in turn inform climate model evaluation, climate model development, and regional planning for near-term climate change.

ForceSMIP is open to participants from around the world. Training data and evaluation data will be provided, and participants will submit their code and their estimate of the forced response in the evaluation data (by early 2024). These contributions will be used for peer-reviewed publications analyzing which methods perform best and generating an observational forced response estimate, and contributors who make serious contributions will be included as coauthors on these planned publications. For more details and to register as a contributor, see the ForceSMIP webpage: https://sites.google.com/ethz.ch/forcesmip/. 

As part of the larger ForceSMIP effort, there will be in-person hackathons on August 29-31, 2023 at ETH Zürich in Zurich, Switzerland and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. These hackathons are aimed at bringing together early-career scientists and experts in climate model evaluation, statistical methods for climate science, and machine learning. The hackathon/workshop will include lectures on a number of relevant topics, as well as time for working on ForceSMIP contributions in small groups.

Travel support is available for a limited number of early-career participants for the NCAR node, funded by the National Science Foundation. Support may be available for the ETH node pending support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

Key dates

• July 3, 2023: Deadline to Register for ForceSMIP Hackathon and apply for travel support
• mid July: Notification of participation and travel support for early registration applicants
• July 31, 2023: Final deadline to Register for ForceSMIP Hackathon (after the July 3rd deadline, applicants will be accepted on a first come, first served basis until space is filled)
• August 29-31, 2023 (approx. 9:00-18:00 local time): Hackathon in Zurich, Switzerland or Boulder, CO, USA.
• March 1, 2024: Deadline to submit ForceSMIP contributions (developed at the hackathon or separately).

Please reach out to me or one of the other organizers with any questions about ForceSMIP or the ForceSMIP Hackathon, and we hope to see you in Zurich or Boulder!

Best,

Karen 

ForceSMIP Co-Organizers:

Robert Jnglin Wills (ETH Zürich): r.jngl...@usys.ethz.ch
Clara Deser (NCAR): cde...@ucar.edu
Karen McKinnon (UCLA): kmck...@ucla.edu
Adam Philips (NCAR): asph...@ucar.edu
Stephen Po-Chedley (LLNL): poche...@llnl.gov
Sebastian Sippel (University of Leipzig): sebastia...@uni-leipzig.de