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.
ANR project COCOA for coupling methods funded
5 September 2016
The COCOA project has been funded by the ANR for a total budget of 695 KEuros over 4 years. 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-atmopshere coupling processes. The project is organized around four main scientific issues: improving the physical contents of the parameterizations of air-sea fluxes in CMs; assessing the overall coherence of the complex set of parameterizations representing atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers and air-sea fluxes; improving the numerical schemes and software implementation related to OA coupling; assessing the actual impact of the previous improvements in CMs. To achieve its goals, this project brings together expert scientists from various disciplines (physicists, applied mathematicians, computer scientists).
Multi-dimensionnal coupling in Hydraulics at CEMRACS 2016
5 September 2016
The MOCHA project at CEMRACS 2016 (07-08/2016) is a collaboration between CERFACS, EDF (LNHE) and INRIA dedicated to multi-dimensionnal coupling in river hydrodynamics. This approach offers a convenient solution to complex flow modeling while limiting the computational cost and making the most of pre-existing models. A lateral interface coupling solution was implemented between a 1D model adapted to the main channel dynamics and local 2D models able to represent the flood.
A CERFACS researcher elected at the Board of the Combustion Institute
8 August 2016
T. Poinsot has been elected at the Board of the Combustion Institute and will start his term on August 8, 2016. The board decides of all important decisions within the Combustion Institute. For example, this is where the sites for the presigious Symposium (Int.) on Comb. are chosen. The next Symposia will take place in Dublin in 2018 and Adelaide in 2020.
The Zeldovich medal for T. Poinsot at the 36th Symp. (Int.) on Comb.
8 August 2016
At the last Symposium on Combustion in Seoul, Korea, T. Poinsot has been awarded the Zeldovich medal, one of the four Gold medals awarded by the Combustion Institute. The Ya B. Zeldovich is awarded for " contribution to the theory of the fundamentals of reacting flows". It is the third time it goes to a french scientist (after P. Clavin in 2014 and S. Candel in 2010). It confirms the high level of the CERFACS team in the field of numerical combustion.
A publication in Nature Climate Change
17 April 2016
The impact factor of 14.5 of the journal "Nature Climate Change" classes it first in the "Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences" category. Christophe CASSOU, CNRS researcher at CERFACS, published in this journal, in collaboration with a CNRS researcher at Météo-France, an article that is already very noticed by the climate science community. In this paper, the authors develop a new criterion for defining the starting date of the seasons in Western Europe, based solely on the dynamics of the atmosphere. This very specific criterion allows to assess that human activities, via greenhouse gases and aerosols emissions, are responsible for an about ten day earlier onset of the summer season in the 2000s compared to the 1960s, and that this advance would reach twenty days in 2100 when the most emitting greenhouse gas scenario, that is the "business as usual" one (RCP 8.5), was followed. The work is based on analysis of observations as well as the results of numerical simulations with the coupled model CNRM-CM5 that has been developed by teams from Météo-France and CERFACS, and was widely referenced in the last IPCC report published in 2013-2014. Link to the articleon the Nature Climate Change journal site:
Antoine Colmet Daage wins the “3 minutes PhD challenge” organised by Montpellier’s Water and Environment Institute (IM2E)
11 April 2016
Antoine Comet Daage wins the "3 minutes PhD challenge" organised by Montpellier's Water and Environment Institute (IM2E). Abstract (in french): Le changement climatique est aujourd’hui une réalité reconnue par la communauté scientifique. Dans notre région, l’influence du changement climatique devrait se traduire par une hausse des précipitations extrêmes malgré une diminution de la pluviométrie annuelle. Les acteurs de la région, comme Mr. Robert, paysan, constatent que cela influe sur les crues et les inondations du bassin du Lez à Montpellier, mais pour y faire face, ils aimeraient en avoir une estimation quantitative plus précise et locale. Cette thèse a pour but de répondre à cette demande. Pour cela, on compare localement des crues du passé à celle du futur. On cherche alors à estimer si l’inondation qui affectait le champ de Mr. Robert tous les dix ans changera ou pas, et si oui, son amplitude. (Video to come soon)
