C2SM takes off as an extra-departmental science center in January 2021
After several years of preparations, we now proudly announce C2SM’s start as an extra-departmental science center of ETH in January 2021. C2SM will be assigned to the domain of ETH’s Vice President for Research, and thus directly report to him.
C2SM transitions into this new organisational form together with renewed commitments from its long-term partners, i.e., the Swiss Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss), the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa), the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), and the Swiss Centre of Excellence for Agricultural Research (Agroscope) as a junior partner. With the transition, C2SM is ensured a long-term perspective allowing our vision to solve tomorrow’s challenges in the analysis and modelling of weather and climate to come true.
Strategic focus themes
For the next five years, our activities will be organised around the four major themes “High Performance Computing (HPC)”, “Earth System Models (ESMs)”, “Climate Scenarios”, and “Environmental Modelling and Impact Science”. With the two latter themes, we will expand our contributions to the generation of climate scenarios and also newly include environmental modelling, as well as impact sciences in our portfolio. Besides enabling research in the latter areas and opening new avenues for collaborations, this has the advantage that we will offer added value to a broader group of members, including those at WSL and Agroscope. The four themes are built on the premise that the optimal way to bring together the members is to work jointly on common objectives and to share resources. C2SM provides the expertise, know-how, and infrastructure to enable and enhance our members’ research portfolios and to foster synergies between the members, building upon the respective strengths of the five member institutions.
Rearranging our working groups
Much of our technical work revolves around tasks that are defined and discussed in member working groups. Specifically, the annual work schedule of the C2SM scientific programmers is determined by tasks and / or short-term projects that are collected on an annual basis from individual C2SM member groups or bigger projects in the community. The scientific programmers together with the Executive Director then prioritise the tasks according their strategic importance and urgency of the requests and present and discuss them at the annual working groups meetings, which usually take place in the beginning of the year. The major part of this work is base funded, but some additional fraction may be financed by third-party projects of individual members or bigger projects in the community.
With the transition to the extra-departmental center, we have restructured our previous working groups and created four new working groups that are aligned with the four strategic themes. Consequently, we will also adapt the annual working group meetings accordingly. We will introduce a “C2SM Working Group Day”, during which all working groups will meet in successive meetings. The first such C2SM Working Group Day is currently scheduled for February / March 2021. This will be an important opportunity for the community to shape the goals and the work mode of the individual working groups. We strongly encourage our members to be part of this process and attend this meeting.
Improved Model Support
C2SM is also in the process of improving and extending its high-level technical support to the modelling groups. The focus will be on the C2SM supported model systems. This support will also be better aligned with MeteoSwiss and CSCS.
Hiring completed
The transition and the associated expansion of strategic foci and tasks requires a stronger workforce. During the negotiations, we were successful in making the case for two new positions in the areas of HPC and climate scenarios/impact modelling. In addition, one position became open after the departure of Colombe Siegenthaler. We are very happy to announce that hiring is completed, and in addition to offering a temporary employee a long-term employment contract, we will welcome two new scientific programmers in the Executive Office in spring 2021.
EXCLAIM
One of the most prominent reasons for transitioning C2SM to an institution with a long-term perspective is our ambition to take forward the development of the next generation of modelling systems for weather and climate. With respect to this ambition, we have achieved a major milestone this year: in November 2020, ETH school board approved the open ETH project proposal EXCLAIM led by Prof. Nicolas Gruber and involving many C2SM members. EXCLAIM aims to develop an exascale computing and data platform for cloud-resolving weather and climate modelling, capable of simulating the regional to global ocean-sea-ice-atmosphere-land system at much higher scale than previously possible. Please find more information on the project website.
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Prof. Nicolas Gruber
Outgoing Chair of C2SM
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Prof. Reto Knutti
New Chair of C2SM
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Prof. Heini Wernli
Deputy Chair of C2SM
Change at the helm of C2SM
Last but not least, at their meeting on 8 December 2020, ETH School Board appointed Prof. Reto Knutti as C2SM’s new chair and Prof. Heini Wernli as his deputy. This appointment was based on a proposal by the Vice President of Research, Prof. Detlef Günther, who had consulted also with the partner institutions. Both Profs. Knutti and Wernli will start their two-year term in January 2021. We welcome Reto and Heini in their new roles and are very much looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.
Reto Knutti replaces Nicolas Gruber who was deputy Chair of C2SM from its start in 2008 to 2012, and since then has been chairing C2SM until today. We cannot thank Niki enough for his genuine, outstanding and never subsiding engagement for C2SM. Niki has reached numerous achievements during his time as Chair. Amongst others, he established ETH-Klimarunde in 2013, which is meanwhile considered the ETH flagship outreach event in the area of climate change. However, his greatest accomplishment undoubtedly consists of taking the lead in transitioning the competence center C2SM to an extra-departmental science center in the past four years. Our congratulations to this outstanding achievement, and thank you very much for your engagement, Niki!
Nicolas Gruber will remain in the Steering Committee for the next term to support the new Chair and to ensure a good link with the EXCLAIM project.
We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to Mischa Croci-Maspoli who has been Deputy Chair of C2SM since 2016. We very much value his exceptional and continuous engagement for C2SM. In addition, as a representative of MeteoSwiss, Mischa often contributed very much appreciated outside views. Among others, it is this diversity brought in by Mischa and the other members of the Steering Committee that has made C2SM so successful, thus laying the basis for the transition to a long-term institution. Thanks so much Mischa, and we are looking forward to continue working together with you!
We are ready to start the extra-departmental centre and breaking exciting new grounds in our four strategic focus areas after the Christmas break. Until then we wish you a wonderful and prosperous holiday. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Authors:
Christina Schnadt Poberaj, Executive Director C2SM
Nicolas Gruber, Chair C2SM