ECMWF events in 2021: virtual, physical or a bit of both!

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ECMWF events 2021

ECMWF’s 2021 events programme is set to include both virtual and physical events. It features workshops on cloud technologies, ocean data assimilation and hydrological prediction as well as established events such as our user meeting, Annual Seminar and workshop on HPC in meteorology. Registration for some workshops is now open.

2020 will certainly remain as a year like no other. From the events perspective, ECMWF – like other organisations – has had to adapt to what video-conferencing has to offer and transform its physical meetings into virtual ones. Of course, there is still a lot to learn, and a need for video-conferencing platforms to adapt to the requirements of scientific gatherings.

However, on the whole, ECMWF’s remote events have allowed our scientists to exchange with colleagues who may not have been able to travel to the UK. We have seen an increase of 98% in attendance (based solely on events which took place in both 2019 and 2020).

“Whilst nothing compares with face-to-face exchanges, poster sessions and breakout discussions have still led to fruitful discussions,” says Hilda Carr, Head of Communications at ECMWF. “The prospects for 2021 are virtual events initially until the COVID situation improves to a point where we can meet again in person, but we are also keen to continue the broader collaboration that we have seen over the past few months by maintaining a level of remote participation.”

Workshop online breakout session

Participants at the workshop on warm conveyor belts in March 2020 – ECMWF’s first fully virtual workshop – embraced the opportunity to continue discussions during online breakout sessions.

An overview of some of the key events is provided below. Full details of all our 2021 workshops and seminars are available on the Workshops web page.

Weather and climate in the cloud workshop

8–10 February

A virtual workshop to discuss experiences with and plans for using cloud technologies to improve services for users.

Cloud technologies open many new opportunities for the community working in operational meteorology to better serve our users, from infrastructures that bring users to the data, to server-side processing. Combined with the popular and powerful Python ecosystem, cloud technologies also bring opportunities for us to design new interfaces that are less domain specific and enable data scientists from different disciplines to tap into the data’s potential.

We are looking for contributions on topics related to user services, server-side processing and data analytics, training provision, and the role of standards and APIs to move services between cloud environments.

ECMWF/OceanPredict workshop on advances in ocean data assimilation

17–20 May

A virtual workshop bringing together experts in the field of ocean and coupled data assimilation to discuss the latest progress, to outline the main challenges and to identify new directions for research.

Ocean data assimilation underpins many forecasting and reanalysis applications. Seasonal forecasts rely on ocean data assimilation to produce initial conditions for the ocean component of coupled forecasts. Multi-decadal ocean and coupled reanalyses enable the calibration of these forecasts and allow studies into the climate of the ocean’s recent past. Higher resolution global and regional short-range forecasts of the ocean also require initialisation through data assimilation, which has been the focus of groups contributing to the Data Assimilation Task Team (DA-TT) of OceanPredict.

Using ECMWF’s Forecasts (UEF): Weather in exceptional circumstances

1–4 June

ECMWF’s annual user meeting, open to all users of ECMWF data, products and services.

The meeting provides a forum for exchanging ideas and experiences on the use of ECMWF data and products and to collect feedback on forecast performance and ECMWF products. It will feature a variety of talks by participants and ECMWF staff, keynote addresses and interactive sessions.

The 2021 theme ‘Weather in exceptional circumstances’ will explore forecasting for severe weather and extremes and providing data, products and services in extraordinary circumstances. Recent times have proved that ECMWF, all users of ECMWF data and products, and the wider meteorological community have the ability to continue to provide useful and informative information even in the most extraordinary circumstances.

During the meeting we will look at how ECMWF products and services have been used to understand weather extremes and mitigate the impacts of extraordinary circumstances. There will be a focus towards using case studies as examples and the benefits of working collaboratively with other countries and organisations.

The meeting is being planned to be both in-person and online to allow the maximum number of participants to attend.

ECMWF virtual event microsite

A dedicated microsite for each virtual event allows registered participants to access all the event resources in one place, including the live stream, presentations and recordings, as well as areas for networking.

Workshop on hydrological prediction and applications

29 June–1 July

A virtual event to engage the wider research and operational hydrological forecasting community through a range of talks and poster and debate sessions.

The first day will present and discuss recent advances in global hydrological modelling used in water cycle predictions in medium and seasonal ranges and in monitoring applications such as global reanalysis. A particular emphasis will be on operational and pre-operational systems and services of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).

The second and third days will be organised by the Hydrological Ensemble Prediction EXperiment (HEPEX) and the Global Flood Partnership (GFP). The focus will be on ensemble-based approaches for forecasting and monitoring hydrological extremes, flood monitoring and mapping, and supporting water resources and flood risk management.

This event is co-organised by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission.

Annual Seminar: Observations

13–17 September

ECMWF’s flagship educational event, aimed in the first instance at early career scientists, but also at those who are more established in their field.

The 2021 Annual Seminar on Observations will provide an Earth system view of observations, identifying where the current global observing system is meeting new and existing Earth system requirements. How effectively the current observing system is being used for numerical weather prediction (NWP) and reanalysis will be explored, as well as consideration to gaps and how they may be addressed in the future.

The seminar will consider science and technical issues common to observations across multiple components, as well as issues specific to these components.

High-performance computing in meteorology workshop: Towards exascale computing in numerical weather prediction (NWP)

20–24 September, Bologna, Italy

Our biennial workshop on the use of high-performance computing (HPC) in meteorology. (The 2020 workshop has been postponed to 2021.)

High-performance computer architectures are becoming ever more complex, which presents significant challenges for the ongoing development of operational meteorological applications, themselves highly dependent on computing capability. This workshop is currently planned to take place in Bologna, but we will of course adjust to the COVID situation at the time.

The workshop will consist of keynote talks from invited speakers, 20–30-minute presentations, a panel discussion and a visit to ECMWF’s brand-new data centre.

We invite presentations on the topics of international exascale efforts in NWP; progress in HPC scalability; using AI and big data; and hardware news.