The Center

The Center for Climate Systems Modeling (C2SM) is a joint center of the partner institutions ETH Zurich, external page MeteoSwiss, external page Empa, external page WSL, and external page Eawag. Organisationally, since 2021, C2SM is an extra-departmental center of ETH Zurich within the domain of the Vice-President of Research. C2SM's mission is to provide a science, technology, and networking platform for its members and its partner institutions.

C2SM was founded in 2008 as one of the first competence centers of ETH Zurich, with the founding partners ETH Zürich, MeteoSwiss, Empa, and Agroscope. In 2012, WSL joined, and in 2023 Eawag joined as a fifth partner institution. On the basis of an external review that demonstrated its excellence and its generation of a substantial added value, in 2019 ETH’s school board granted C2SM a long-term funding horizon by making it an extra-departmental center, effective in 2021. The partner institutions also agreed to make a long-term funding commitment, permitting C2SM to continue working on its long-term vision, i.e. to solve tomorrow’s challenges in the analysis and modelling of weather and climate.

C2SM’s overarching objective is to bring the weather, climate, climate impact, computational, and related communities in the Zurich area together in order to improve their ability to analyse, model, and predict multi-scale and multi-component interactions within the Earth System. To this end, its mission is to empower this community by acting

• as a collaborative platform for innovation,
• as a provider of scientific, and technical support,
• as an organizer of technical training, and
• as a vehicle for public outreach.

C2SM focuses on the development and application of complex models of weather, climate and the Earth system, including its atmospheric composition. It provides a simulation and data analysis infrastructure for these models and the science that emanates from them. C2SM connects to related disciplines at ETH and beyond to exponentiate research outcomes and to bridge disciplines in the area of climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation.

C2SM seeks to foster interdisciplinary research and interactions across the partner institutions and research groups. C2SM provides support to its members and provides an umbrella for a number of research projects in four foci areas that are (i) high performance computing, (ii) Earth system modelling, (iii) climate scenarios, as well as (iv) environmental and impact modelling. It also organises educational activities such as technical and scientific workshops, summer schools, and outreach events.

C2SM currently includes over 40 members who are professors or group leaders in one of the partner institutions. Together they form the Plenary. The C2SM community includes all students, post-doctoral fellows, and scientific and technical staff from the Members' group. The center is run by an executive office and strategically guided by a steering committee. In addition, its international scientific advisory board monitors and advises C2SM on a regular basis.