Education

DCMIP Summer School: Non-Hydrostatic Weather and Earth System Models and Machine Learning Emulators

NCAR, Boulder, CO: June/2-6/2025, NCAR Mesa Laboratory 

Organized by Christiane Jablonowski, Tim Andrews, Garrett Limon and Owen Hughes (University of Michigan), Peter H. Lauritzen and Adam Herrington (NCAR), Mark Taylor, Peter Bosler, and Oksana Guba (Sandia National Laboratories), Colin Zarzycki (Penn State University), Travis O'Brien and Joshua Elms (Indiana University), and additional model mentors

The NSF StormSPEED project hosted an educational event to entice and inspire the next generation of Earth system modelers. The 2025 Dynamical Core Model Intercomparison Project (DCMIP-2025) and Summer School highlighted the newest modeling techniques for global Earth system and weather models. It was held at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, from June/2-6/2025 and emphasized nonhydrostatic modeling techniques and machine learning emulators as overarching themes. The objectives of the DCMIP-2025 Summer School were (1) to teach a group of about 50 multi-disciplinary students and postdocs how today’s and future atmospheric models are or need to be built, (2) to use idealized test cases to expose selected model design choices in simplified modeling frameworks based on three non-hydrostatic dynamical cores (Spectral Element, MPAS, FV3) that are part of NCAR’s/CESM’s Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), and (3) provide insights into some recent machine learning-based emulators for weather models. DCMIP-2025 thereby continued the DCMIP-2008, DCMIP-2012 and DCMIP-2016 model intercomparison and summer school series. The DCMIP event was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NOAA, and supported by NSF NCAR.

AI-generated depiction of the DCMIP-2025 event: