nextGEMS – Next Generation Earth Modelling Systems
nextGEMS is a collaborative European project. Funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, it will tap expertise from fourteen European Nations to develop two next generation (storm-resolving) Earth-system Models. Through breakthroughs in simulation realism, these models will allow us to understand and reliably quantify how the climate will change on a global and regional scale, and how the weather, including its extreme events, will look like in the future.
Scientific impact
The much finer grid of nextGEMS’ models allows them to explicitly represent essential climate processes – storms, associated with precipitating deep convection, the effects of the landscape on the atmosphere, the effects of ocean eddies on the ocean heat transport, and its interaction with ice-sheets – that existing climate models now either ignore, or represent empirically. Past research has shown that the physically based approaches nextGEMS exploits are effective in reducing systematic and long-standing errors in conventional climate models, thereby creating a better – more physical – foundation for projections. Because nextGEMS’s storm-resolving models will increase simulation realism on many fronts, they are expected to open new scientific frontiers and shine new light on how the Earth system responds to human activities.
Application impact
nextGEMS storm-resolving models will more realistically represent the climate system for the next 30 years. This includes weather extremes and other components of the Earth system, such as carbon, aerosols and marine nutrients. Importantly, at the same time they will also provide information on scales familiar and relevant to users.
The multi-decadal simulations produced in nextGEMS will be co-designed and tested with stakeholder communities, such as renewable energy producers, coastal marine ecosystems and fisheries managers. This will increase their added value for societal applications and their ability to serve as platforms for innovation in the provision of earth-system information.
By providing citizens with more realistic, detailed and local information on how the climate and weather, including its severest events, will change, nextGEMS will support the operationalization of the Paris Agreement and the associated ‘Green Transition’. nextGEMS models will also serve as prototypes for Digital Twins of the Earth as envisioned by major new EU initiatives such as Destination Earth.
To make this ambitious vision become reality we work with 26 partners across Europe and Senegal in a four-year program, from 2021 – 2025.