Review and Reflection on the ESMD-E3SM PI Meeting
More than 300 U.S. and international scientists attended the Earth System Model Development (ESMD) program area Principal Investigator (PI) and Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Annual All-Hands meeting held in virtual format on October 26-29. The ESMD program area is part of the Earth and Environmental System Modeling (EESM) Program within the Earth and Environmental Systems Sciences Division (EESSD) of the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) Office of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science. Researchers presented a record number of studies – about 200 – from all the ESMD funded specialties and cross-cutting activities in the EESM portfolio. The meeting also provided an opportunity for the DOE researchers to hear keynote presentations about recent advances in the field from the broader community and participate in breakout room discussions. The topics of these discussions ranged from developments in each of the E3SM components and next generation projects, to computational science topics including infrastructure and performance issues, to the application of E3SM to the core water cycle, biogeochemistry, and cryosphere science campaigns as well as ocean and coastal processes which are an emerging area of interest for DOE. Compared to previous years, the agenda of this meeting included a new focus area addressing the integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence in tackling the grand challenges in Earth system modeling.
Another highlight of the meeting was the series of presentations laying out the future versions of E3SM that will push the high-resolution frontier of Earth system modeling to represent natural and manmade systems across scales.
The virtual format of the meeting did not prevent the organizers from continuing some traditional activities such as poster sessions that culminated with a best poster award and a short performance of the “Deep Dives” band, a life-long hobby of the E3SM’s group of researchers sharing a passion for music.
Despite being unable to gather in the same room, the meeting allowed a more diverse mix of attendees than it would have, had it taken place in person, and many conversations started at the meeting are still continuing in the Slack channels opened for the meeting. The success of the meeting was facilitated by the video-conferencing technology and assistance provided by the Oakridge Research Institute for Science and Education (ORISE).
Researchers working to advance the frontier of Earth system modeling all communicated a powerful message at this meeting: that some bold changes need to be made and “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not to fight the old, but on building the new.” (Socrates)
Additional information about the meeting:
- Oral presentations can be viewed via the Meeting Agenda
- Poster presentations are available from the Posters List
- The following two articles describe the awards presented at the meeting:
