COCOA kicks off
13 February 2017
The ANR funded project COCOA has held its kick-off meeting on January 25-28 2017 in Gresse-en-Vercors. This gave scientists from the various disciplines involved in the project (climate modelling, air-sea interface modelling, applied mathematics, computer science, etc.) the opportunity to gather and discuss the different aspects of the project. COCOA, which stands for "COmprehensive Coupling approach for the Ocean and the Atmosphere”, aims to improve climate simulations with a better physical representation of ocean-atmosphere coupling processes.
Hydrology prize for Gildas DAYON
12 January 2017
Gildas Dayon was awarded the 2016 Henri Milon prize (hydrology) by the Société Hydrotechnique de France for his Ph.D thesis entitled "Evolution of the continental hydrological cycle over France during the coming decades" . This work has been done at the CECI CERFACS-CNRS joint research unit, and defended on 20 November, 2015. The Henri Milon award recognizes each year a French-language doctoral thesis dealing with Hydrology.
Best 2016 ASME paper in combustion for an AVBP study at IMFT
4 January 2017
Dr Christian KRAUS (IMF Toulouse) ASME 2016 paper was chosen as one of the Best Papers by the Combustion, Fuels & Emissions Committee after the 2016 Turbo Expo in Seoul, South Korea: GT2016-56368 - Influence of Heat Transfer and Material Temperature on Combustion Instabilities in a Swirl Burner by Christian Kraus, Laurent Selle, Thierry Poinsot, Christoph Arndt, Henning Bockhorn This work was performed within the joint IMFT/CERFACS ERC advanced grant INTECOCIS (intecocis.inp-toulouse.fr)
Sparse Days Meeting 2017 at Cerfacs
2 January 2017
Sparse Days Meeting 2017 at Cerfacs, Toulouse... marking the 70th birthday of Professor Iain Duff September 6th - 8th, 2017
How CERFACS tools are used to design the future helicopter engines.
6 December 2016
This video shows the recent developments of SAFRAN HELICOPTER ENGINES in the field of combustion chambers. It illustrates how Large Eddy Simulations codes developed by CERFACS, CORIA or EM2C contribute to these developments
Welcome to new CERFACS’ members
2 December 2016
Welcome to new engineers, doctors and post-doctors comming at Cerfacs on last 2016 quarter Philippe Leleux - Study Engineer in Algo team Paul Mycek - Post Doctor in Algo team François Moussu - Research Engineer in GlobC team Xavier Pivan - Study Engineer in GlobC team Matthias De Lozzo - Post Doctor in GlobC team Adrien Guibaud - Study Engineer in CFD team Thomas Astoul - Study Engineer in CFD team Michël Bauerheim - Post Doctor in CFD team Lucas Esclapez - Post Doctor in CFD team Fabien Dupuy - Research Engineer in CFD team Lucien Gallen - Doctor in CFD team Charlelie Laurent - Doctor in CFD team Benjamin Farcy - Post-Doctor in CSG team Corentin Lapeyre - Post-Doctor in CFD team Fédéric Pacaud - Doctor in CFD team Matthieu Queguineur - Doctor in CFD team Pamphile Roy - Doctor in CFD team
EU Project APPLICATE kicks off
17 November 2016
EU Horizon 2020 Project Studying Arctic's Connections to Weather and Climate in Europe, Asia and North America Kicks Off Bremerhaven, 14 November 2016. An EU-financed project investigating ways to improve weather and climate prediction in the face of a rapidly changing Arctic officially started this month. Known as APPLICATE (Advanced Prediction in Polar regions and beyond: modelling, observing system design and LInkages associated with a Changing Arctic climaTE), the €8 million project, financed by the EU HORIZON 2020 Research and Innovation programme, involves 16 partners from nine countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and will be carried out over a period of four years. The multinational and multidisciplinary consortium will work to enhance weather and climate prediction capabilities not only in the Arctic, but also in Europe, Asia, and North America. A focus on the Arctic is important for improved predictions of weather and climate in the midlatitudes because the changes taking place in the Arctic due to climate change—the retreat of sea ice, ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet and other ice caps, warming seas and a warming atmosphere—have the potential to influence weather and climate in the mid-latitudes. According to several studies (the most recent of which was published in Nature Climate Change in October 2016), a warming Arctic can, in fact, lead to prolonged periods of severe weather and cold spells in the mid-latitudes. The impacts of severe weather on commerce and infrastructure can be significant, so having adequate tools to predict when and how severe weather systems will affect Europe, Asia and North America is vital to inhabitants of these regions. The APPLICATE project is bringing together an international team of experts in weather and climate prediction to improve climate and weather forecasting models to work on improving prediction tools while expanding and improving observational capabilities in the Arctic. “In the Arctic, today’s prediction systems suffer from a lack of observations, model shortcomings and deficits in effectively combining models with observations,” according to APPLICATE Project Coordinator Prof Thomas Jung, climate scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, the lead partner in the project. “Our aim is to design a future Arctic observing system that enhances our predictive capacity. Additionally, the representation of critical processes in models will be improved and new ways of assimilating observations into models will be explored.” The APPLICATE project also involves a strong education, training and outreach component in order to train the next generation of experts and raise awareness about the benefits of improved climate and weather forecasting. Members of the APPLICATE consortium will engage with stakeholders who use weather and climate forecasts in hopes of receiving constructive feedback, allowing the models and forecasts to be constantly improved and updated, taking into account user needs. Early career scientists in climate-related fields will have the opportunity to participate in a summer school and webinar lectures, while the general public will be able to learn about the project thanks to specially-produced informational videos and publications. Consortium members plan to work closely with other EU-financed projects and researchers outside of Europe working on similar topics in order to maximise synergies and productivity. A website for the APPLICATE project offering regular news and information about the initiative is set to be launched in the coming months.
CERFACS IPCC work produces remarkable improvements in combustion LES code
4 November 2016
The collaboration between CERFACS and INTEL in the IPCC center has allowed remarkable improvements in the efficiency of the combustion code AVBP. Accelerations of the 7.0.2 AVBP of the order of 20 to 40 percent have been observed on real production cases on all architectures tested (see below). AVBP is used as a LES production tool by multiple companies: these gains lead to very significant savings for those companies in terms of CPU time and cost. Figure : AVBP acceleration V7.0.2 / V6.2.1
Intel PCC 2016
17 October 2016
We are pleased to announce the Intel PCC 2016 Fall Forum to be held on October 24 1:00pm to October 27 4:30pm at CERFACS (J.C. André conference room). Registration is mandatory (and free) : This workshop is organised in the framework of the intel parallel computing center program and focuses on code modernisation and optimisation for current an future architectures. The tentative agenda includes introduction to tools for code modernisation and profiling , highlights from current IPCC in Europe and hands on experience on KNL systems. Registration closes on the 21st of October.
T. Poinsot to become Editor in Chief of Combustion and Flame in october 2016
21 September 2016
P. Dagaut (Orleans) will be replaced by T. Poinsot as Editor in Chief of Combustion and Flame in october 2016. The editorial work of Combustion and Flame is performed by two offices: one in the US (Pr F. Egolfopoulos) and one in Europe. More than 800 manuscripts are submitted every year from the whole world. Three associate editors will assist T. Poinsot: Pr E. Mastorakos (Cambridge), Pr P. Glarborg (TU Denmark) and Pr T. Faravelli (Poly. Milano).
Research in natural disaster: Forecasting and emergency response for wildland fires
6 September 2016
The project FireCastER (FIRE, foreCASTing and Emergency Response platform) was successfully funded for 2017-2020 by the French national research agency (ANR). This project involving CECI (CNRS-CERFACS) with partners such as SPE/Université de Corse, INRIA, CNRM/Météo-France and LA/Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées aims at enhancing scientific and technological innovation to - evolve fire risk products based on ensemble-based simulations - develop data assimilation algorithm of aerial and satellite imagery to improve forecast of future wildfire spread behavior.
New method for wildfire behavior monitoring in real time
6 September 2016
We worked on developing new tools for wildfire behavior forecasting during the 2016 CEMRACS Summer Program with colleagues from INRIA, LIMSI and the University of Maryland. A new method based on image segmentation was adapted for any wildfire spread model (level-set or lagrangian-type). The key idea is to correct the fire front trajectory as infrared images become available. This method was successfully applied to the Rim fire in Yosemite National park in 2013. This work is supported by the French national programs, Labex AMIES and LEFE/INSU, as well as by the NSF-WIFIRE project funding in the USA.
