The scientific and research community in Germany and Switzerland is setting a milestone in climate and weather research: Since 31 January, 2024, the renowned climate and weather model ICON has been made available to the public under an open source license. This step will open up the scientific basis for weather forecasts and climate projections and make it available to everyone.
The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), ETH Zurich, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are teaming up to make weather and climate models more efficient and accurate on newly developed computer architectures. In particular, it is about the efficient portability of the ECMWF model to GPUs.
The term "high-performance computer" already implies a high energy demand. Energy efficiency is therefore a central consideration in the procurement and use of supercomputers at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) — just as it was during the planning of the new building in Lugano more than a decade ago.
The Federal Council appointed Christof Appenzeller as director of the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology at its meeting on 7 September. Mr Appenzeller will take up his post on 1 January 2023, succeeding Peter Binder who will retire at the end of the year.