Asking for community input for the new FY plan - what could/should ACCESS-NRI work on that would most benefit the community
Draft will be shared April
Final draft May-June (expect minimal changes)
Please add ideas to form by 16 March (submit a new form for each idea): this online form
Scope of work could be large or small (they have had a submission for idealised modelling)
CSET IntroductionJorge Bornemann
Community Seamless Evaluation Toolkit
Support assessment, evaluation, verification, across space and time scales (nowcasting to weather forecasting to climate) including ensembles, physics-based and ML models
A process-oriented focus for model assessment (compare models against each other and observation)
Modern software, open access, comprehensive documentation, easy to use and contribute to
Design concepts discussed including fields and operators to develop recipes and produce a diagnostic
Designed to make it easy for researchers without strong computing skills to use, as well as for researchers developing and coding new diagnostics to contribute to.
Uses Iris, GitHub, recipes defined in YAML, plots add metadata to JSON file that is used to display on a webpage, cylc workflow, verification uses MET and METplus, VERPy used to produce plots
Walked through some example recipes, such as spatial plots at a specific time, ensemble mean spatial plot
Showed how the output plots are organised on the webpage, and example plots: spatial maps, domain mean timeseries, difference plots, histograms, transects, profiles, convective cell statistics (52 recipes so far added including elevated convection diagnostics, age of air)
Next steps: climate diagnostics, overlay observations with diagnostics
Prerequisites: xp65, a project that hosts a web service, hr22, desirable GitHub account
Stepped through installation, including how to install cylc workflow
Old installation by Scott works and can open the suite (needs to be updated to latest CSET version)
Bureau developing an nci site file, but not required (contact Vinod for nci site file)
Walked through how to use the cylc suite to set up to read in model experiment data, select which fields to visualise, which diagnostics to run and plot
Provided commands to run the cylc workflow and showed the website displaying the outputs
Compute/storage resources:Heidi Nettelbeck
Get your experiment proposals in for Q1/2026. We have 1.5 MSU allocation this quarter. See here for how to apply for Atmosphere WG Resources.
heidi
(Heidi Nettelbeck, ACCESS-NRI Atmosphere Modelling Team Lead)
2
Atmosphere WG meeting minutes 25/03/2026
11 participants on Zoom
Brief update from WG co-chairs and ACCESS-NRI:Yi Huang, Charmaine Franklin, Matt Woodhouse, Heidi Nettelbeck
Charmaine (BoM): reported that the Access-A and -AE ensemble systems are now running in near real-time on the Bureau’s new HPC, with research shifting focus to LFRic and RAL4, including new ancillary file development and testing of an interactive aerosol scheme.
Yi provided an update on computing resources, noting strong usage by university members for cloud-interaction simulations and cloud feedback studies led by various team members.
Matt mentioned that CSIRO is undergoing restructuring, which may impact their activities, including potential reduced capacity for CMIP7 preparations.
Machine Learning/Atmosphere Workshop (Melbourne, Aug 2026):Heidi Nettelbeck
Discussed aim of workshop to focus on how Atmosphere WG could use machine learning to complement and advance existing physical atmospheric models rather than replacing them with emulators. Matt and Yi expressed interest in parameterisation aspects and hybrid physics-machine learning approaches, while Charmaine emphasized the need to bridge differences with the ML working group’s focus. The group agreed their aim should be to develop machine learning techniques that enhance current models through parameterisation, bias reduction, and post-processing of model outputs.
Atmosphere WG co-chair shake-upMatt Woodhouse, Heidi Nettelbeck
Two Atmosphere WG co-chairs (Matt and Charmaine) are ready to hand over the baton as co-chairs after 2.5 years in the position. They announced their intention to step down and open up the positions to the community, with a focus on finding two new co-chairs to work with Yi and Heidi. The role involves approximately two hours of work per month, including monthly planning meetings, and would be beneficial for someone’s CV or career development. Self-nominations are open! The group aims to have new co-chairs in place by their April meeting.
Science talk
Implementation of aerosol-aware ice nucleation particle (INP) parameterisations in the high-resolution regional UM model over the Southern Ocean, Zhangcheng Pei
Zhangcheng from the University of Tasmania presented on investigating cloud ice processes in the UM regression model over the Southern Ocean, highlighting improvements in liquid water path and radiation simulations when using aerosol-microphysics coupling.
Inferring long-term cloud responses to warming from their short-term variability, Qinggang Gao
Qinggang from the University of Melbourne discussed cloud responses to warming from natural variability, examining cloud feedback in the UK Earth System Model and finding significant biases in outgoing radiation over the maritime continent.
Compute/storage resources:Heidi Nettelbeck
Get your experiment proposals in for Q1/2026. We have 1.5 MSU allocation this quarter. See here for how to apply for Atmosphere WG Resources.