More than 100 scientists join the Hamburg node of the WCRP Global Km-Scale Hackathon

Km-scale models (horizontal resolution < 10 km) represent a pivotal change in the way scientists simulate the Earth system. Km-scale models begin to explicitly capture critical phenomena such as moist convection, topographic effects, and coastal interactions. This enables far more physical and accurate simulations of high-impact weather and climate features like tropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers, and extreme precipitation, especially in regions with complex terrain. 

But with this leap in fidelity comes a new generation of challenges. The transition to km-scale modeling fundamentally changes not only the science, but the entire ecosystem of climate research. From computation to data access and workflows, a full rethinking of how models are built and used is required. In model development, processes like land hydrology can be treated at fine scales, allowing for new and more physical approaches to coupling between land, atmosphere, ocean, biosphere and cryosphere. Computationally, running these models, especially at global scale, demands resources at the forefront of computing. Even regional simulations produce data at a scale that pushes current infrastructure. In terms of data management, the volume of output makes storage and sharing a major constraint, sometimes more costly than the simulations themselves. Traditional workflows neither work nor flow at this scale, with memory limitations requiring new tools and in-situ analysis methods.