Copenhagen University’s TeamOcean & e-Science bring to you:

VEROS – the Tesla of climate models

A short 3h workshop for anybody working in climate science, but in particular those who have not yet dared to make their own climate simulations.

In February and March 2020 we will host Prof. Markus Jochum at IMAU within a NESSC visiting fellowship. Markus is an expert in Physical Oceanography and in particular Climate-, Ocean and Carbon Cycle modelling. In his group at Copenhagen University a new modelling framework in pure Python has been developed recently. During his visit he will give a tutorial on this modelling framework.

The workshop

Climate projections rely to a large extent on vast sets of computer simulations. The models used for these simulations are dizzingly complex and even for experts it is often not possible anymore to assess their credibility. Much of the problem has to do with the fact that these models have been developed by experts FOR experts.

In the short Thursday morning workshop, I will introduce VEROS, the VERsatile Ocean Simulator, written by experts for students and not-numerically-inclined climate scientists. VEROS is  a full primitive equation ocean model written entirely in Python, has the same performance as its original GFDL-based Fortran version, and is able to use GPUs (the graphic cards you use to play CS:GO or GTA) and CPUs interchangeably: https://veros.readthedocs.io/
VEROS also simulates marine biogeochemistry to reproduce the carbon cycle.

During the workshop we will briefly discuss the concepts and ideas behind VEROS, walk you through the installation and experimental setup, and then everybody will answer for themselves the science question (before lunch): Do Southern Ocean winds control European climate? This is obviously a central question for climate scientists and society alike, and it has been hotly debated for two decades now.

Date:  Thursday, February 6th, from 9am to noon
Location: IMAU, Utrecht University, room BBG607
Recommended reading: Effect of Drake Passage on the global thermohaline circulation, Toggweiler and Samuels, Deep Sea Research I, 1995

If you wish to participate please reply to A.S.vonderHeydt@uu.nl, class limit is 25 people. First come, first serve.

We recommend that you use our Jupyter Notebook interface, since this ensures that everybody has the same environment. However, if you plan to use Veros on your own laptop, please let me know so we plan accordingly.