Digital Earths – Hack-a-Palooza: a global hackathon of Storm Resolving Models

Concept: 

Digital Earths Lighthouse Activity is planning a two-phased global pan-hackathon, Hack-a-Palooza, for the analysis of “Storm Resolving Models”, with the first phase to take place 12-17 May 2025, spread across 11 regional nodes worldwide. WCRP Digital Earth Lighthouse is the first point of contact/umbrella/sponsor, with the support of other projects, including Destination Earth (DestinE), Next Generation Earth System Modelling (NextGEMS), WarmWorld, Earth Visualization Engines (EVE) and European Eddy-Rich Earth System Models (EERIE).  

The Hack-a-Palooza aims to:  

  1. Enable the global sharing of data, workflows, and best practice in the joint analysis of “Storm Resolving Models”, both global and regional. 
  1. Focus on users, by enabling access to powerful data nodes on an ongoing basis, supported by ‘ambassadors’, furthering global collaboration, underpinned by the powerful resources at each node. 
  1. Longer-term, enable more distributed and broader access to a wider selection of users, based on lessons learned in stage 1.  

The Hack-a-Palooza’s organization is managed by a steering committee, supported by a technical steering committee, which are in the process of coming together. A detailed work plan can be found here.   

Goals: 

The main goals of the 2025 Hack-a-Palooza are to:  

  1. Accelerate the improvement and analysis of Storm Resolving Models (global and regional) 
  1. Socialize best practices in coding and data intensive applications (infrastructure and workflows) 
  1. Establish and disseminate the advantages of adopting common standards for storm resolving weather and climate information. 
  1. Build solidarity and open access to resources. 

Proposed protocol for experiment: 

The proposed experimental protocol that underpins the data to be made available during the 2025 Hack-a-Palooza is currently under review in the Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.  

More information on the hackathon and how to join: Hackathon Webpage