iCAS 2024 Symposium Engages International Community to Facilitate Scientific Discovery and Meet Societal Needs

Nearly 50 attendees from 10 countries came together in Stresa, Italy, Sept. 8–12, 2024, to discuss interdisciplinary and international collaboration for advancing Earth system science at the 2024 International Computing in the Atmospheric Sciences Symposium (iCAS 2024). iCAS 2024 presentations are being assembled in a Figshare collection.

“iCAS 2024 was an energizing opportunity to discuss how best to leverage artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and high-performance computing (HPC) technologies as an international community to facilitate scientific discovery and meet societal needs,” said NSF NCAR’s Thomas Hauser, director of the Computational and Information Systems Lab. “And the outcomes will help inform NSF NCAR's computational science strategy in the next strategic plan.”

Highlights included the keynote by Chris Kadow of DKRZ on the future of data analysis and the role of AI in climate research. Attendees also heard from four international panels covering AI, exascale modeling, sustainability, and performance portability. Other participants and presenters included staff from 

organizations including: 
 

• 

  The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) 
   

• The UK Met Office 
   

• The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) 
   

• NASA 
   

• The U.S. Department of Energy 

 

"The outcomes will help inform NSF NCAR's computational science strategy in the next strategic plan.” - Thomas Hauser

 

The attendees also heard from CISL speakers, including: 
 

• Marlee Smith (DAReS) on “DART: 20 Years of Collaboration for Advancing Earth System Science” 
   

• Haiying Xu (ASAP) on “Asynchronous IO and optimized data compression workflow” 
   

• Doug Schuster (ISD) on “Pivoting to NSF NCAR’s Next Generation Geoscience Data Exchange, Integrated Research Data Commons”
   

• Rory Kelly (CSG) on “Supporting an Evolving HPC Community at NCAR”

We also want to thank our industry partners NVIDIA, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and the Alliance Technology Group for their sponsorship and participation. 

iCAS strives to be a platform for open knowledge exchange, networking, and the initiation of long-lasting collaborations. Attendees include leadership and management from centers focused on weather/climate modeling, computing and data services, who hear about and discuss practices they can apply at their centers, discover new sources of expertise, benefit from lessons learned by their peers, and identify opportunities for collaboration.