ExCALIBUR programme news

Design and implementation of new weather and climate diagnostic system - July 2021

As important as the ability to run the next generation modelling systems is the ability for scientists to know what the models are doing. This means that they have to be able to get out of the models the quantities that they need to do that analysis. These quantities are called the model diagnostics. It has been estimated that there are about 5000 diagnostics in the current Unified Model (UM) system. Not all of these are used all of the time. It is therefore important that scientists have a way of telling the model which diagnostics they want when. The LFRic Diagnostic Infrastructure project has been busy designing just such a scheme for the new GungHo/LFRic-based next generation atmosphere model.  

The completion of the LFRic Diagnostic Infrastructure project marks a significant step in delivering the next-generation modelling capability within the Met Office. The system was built using up to date, object-orientated software engineering methods. This object orientated design gives us a high degree of extensibility. Any future model developments or new metadata standards can easily be incorporated into the system. 

We’ve also utilised modern information systems design, such as Single Source of Truth. All metadata are now defined in one place within the model. This means that any change or update to metadata automatically cascades to all parts of the system. 

The system was also designed with intuitiveness in mind. In contrast to the existing system, all parts of the system are human readable. This will allow scientists to configure and run next-generation models in a more flexible and intuitive manner, enabling scientists to spend more time on the science and less time on configuring tools. 

 

ExCALIBUR newsletter - June 2021

Read the latest issue of the ExCALIBUR newsletter for news from the whole programme. This includes details of the recent Cross Cutting themed Met Office awards.

To subscribe to receive future issues directly, email us.

 

Funding opportunities - January 2021 - NOW CLOSED

Open call for five cross cutting themes for the ExCALIBUR Programme:
SPF ExCALIBUR: EX20-6 I/O & Storage 
SPF ExCALIBUR EX20- 7: Data Workflow
SPF ExCALIBUR: EX20-8 Exposing Parallelism: Parallel in Time 
SPF ExCALIBUR: EX20-9 Exposing Parallelism: Task Parallelism 
SPF ExCALIBUR: EX20-10 Machine learning: optimising numerical methods and augmenting physically based applications

Find out more 

Engagement activity - November 2020

The Met Office and ESPRC are running an engagement activity in order to learn more about how UK academia and relevant organisations might fulfil the ExCALIBUR programme requirements, to inform future science and cross-cutting themes for funding.

This activity will run until 4 December 2020. This event has now ended.

 

ExCALIBUR steering committee - June 2020

A steering committee has been formed for the ExCALIBUR programme, including members of the science community with a high level of expertise across various disciplines. We are pleased to announce the following names:

Neil Chue Hong (Chair) - University of Edinburgh

Ash Vadgama - Atomic Weapons Establishment

Simon Vosper - Met Office

Robin Grimes - Ministry of Defence Science & Technology, and Imperial College, London

Bryan Lawrence - NCAS/University of Reading

Nilanjan Chakraborty - Newcastle University

Syma Khalid - Southampton University

James Hetherington - UK Research and Innovation

Simon McIntosh-Smith - University of Bristol

Melissa Terras - University of Edinburgh

Beth Wingate - University of Exeter

Barbara Montanari - Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)/Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

 

ExCALIBUR webinar - funding calls - November 2019

In November 2019 we held a webinar to talk about the ExCALIBUR programme and upcoming funding opportunities. The presentations are available here and a question and answer document can be viewed here.

 

Ministerial announcement of Strategic Priorities Funding of ExCALIBUR - October 2019

The UK Government's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) have announced that the Strategic Priorities Fund will be funding the new ExCALIBUR programme. Read the press release here.