ESM Working group: Meeting notes 2026

Earth System Working Group
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Date: 17/3/2026
Chair: @ctychung
Participants: 16

1. Admin and resource usage

  • Science Presentations: Spaces are regularly available for science presentations at ESM WG meetings. If you have any work that you would like to share with the community, please get in contact the ESM WG co-chairs @dkhutch, @tiloz, @ShayneM, @ctychung or @spencerwong. Presentations from recent conferences and workshops are welcome, as are informal updates on in progress work.

  • LG87 Resource Usage:

    • 1.09 MSU out of the 1.5MSU compute allocation has been used. The remaining allocation is expected to be used by proposed experiments.
    • If you have any experiments you are interested in running with ESM WG resources next quarter, follow the proposal guidelines here to apply to use WG compute.
    • Storage usage at 65 TB of 100 TB allocation.

2. CMIP 2026 community workshop

  • @ctychung presented highlights from the 2026 CMIP community workshop, including an outline of the CMIP7 future scenarios, community MIPs, the launch of the Rapid Evaluation Framework, and changes to the data conventions compared to CMIP6. A scientific highlight was the analysis of high resolution models, and the effects of resolution in reproducing observed trends. Discussions during the workshop raised questions around “operational” CMIP activities as well as the role of AI/ML.

3. Technical presentation: ESM1.6 restart creation

  • @lachlanswhyborn presented on new tools for creating ESM1.6 restarts for new land cover data.
  • In ESM1.6, the CABLE land model discretises each grid cell into tiles, which represent different surface types. Each tile has its own physical state, carrying data for variables like temperature, soil moisture, and nutrient pools. When creating a restart file which uses a new distribution of surface types, new tiles don’t automatically start off with valid data. They need to be initialised with valid and meaningful values, otherwise the model may crash or start far from equilibrium.
  • The restart creation tool provides new tiles with meaningful data for variables associate with the land such as temperature and moisture, and variables associated with the vegetation such as nutrient pools.
  • For land associated variables, surface fraction weighted means are calculated and used within each grid cell. For vegetation associated variables, a staged tile search is used to ensure that only data from relevant vegetation types are used to fill in the missing data.
  • This tool was used to set up ESM1.6 restarts for CMIP7 which used the new land cover datasets.
  • The tool is available at GitHub - ACCESS-NRI/esm1.6-scripts: Scripts and small programs related to ACCESS-ESM1.6 model and configs · GitHub, including documentation of its configuration options.

4. CMIP7 and CSIRO updates

  • @RachelLaw shared figures from the latest ESM1.6 simulations, which are expected to be CMIP7 production runs. Control, 4xCO2, 1pctCO2, and flat10 simulations are all running, and work is underway to tune the emissions driven historical simulation.
  • There hasn’t been a commitment to run the DAMIP simulations with ESM1.6 for the fast track. CSIRO likely does not have capacity to, however if you would be interested in running these simulations and have capacity to do so, please reach out to @RachelLaw.
  • CSIRO is currently facing job cuts, with a large number of cuts going to the Environment Research Unit. This will include job losses among staff working on ACCESS and ESM WG community members. There is currently a 3 week consultation, members raised whether there were avenues for the community to provide feedback on the proposal.

5. Enso focused group

  • @Dietmar_Dommenget is setting up an ENSO focused group for discussing all things ENSO related, including ENSO performance in the ACCESS models. If you are interested in being part of this group, click the bell to follow this topic on the ACCESS Hive ENSO - ACCESS Hive Community Forum, and reach out to anyone you know who may also be interested.

Please feel free to correct any mistakes in these notes directly, or message @spencerwong with corrections.

Additional information

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