Virtual Mobility Grant – Coordinating efforts to create kilometer scale climate forcing data for impact models

During summer 2021, Senior researcher Dirk Karger from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, used a virtual mobility grant is to coordinate efforts in providing standardized, kilometer scale climate data for use in impact studies within the ISIMIP framework with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Studies (PIK). During the 3-month duration of the VM Grant, we implemented several parts of this effort.

by Dirk Karger


In close collaboration with the involved partners at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), we were able to implement a version of the CHELSA downscaling model on the high-performance cluster computing system of the PIK, as well as the high-performance cluster of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. We additionally started an effort for performance optimization on both cluster computers to reduce the runtime of the model on the respective infrastructure.
To facilitate this effort, we conducted several virtual meetings via Zoom, and additionally set up a chat channel to facilitate communication between the two partners mainly working on the project (D. Karger WSL, S. Lange PIK).

During the Virtual Mobility a main topic was the large storage demand for kilometer scale climate data and how it can be provided to end users. Two virtual meetings have been conducted with this respect. One on the data storage availabilities at both institutions and the potential for large data hosting. Another meeting was conducted together with the Copernicus climate data storage to investigate potential overlap in data hosting activities. Currently, we found solutions to host the CHELSA model for the historical time period at ISIMIP data portal at PIK, and implemented a limited area version of the CHELSA model to facilitate customized downscaling of future scenarios from ISIMIP.


If you are interested to join these activities, please contact TG 1.7.