Accurate projections of climate change are vitally important to virtually every area of society and location on Earth. Although important advances continue to be made, the detailed depiction in Earth system models (ESMs) of clouds, storms, precipitation, land-atmosphere interactions, terrain, land-water boundaries, ocean currents and other features critical to local decision-making is not expected to be attainable globally on commodity computing systems until the middle part of this century – yet credible, detailed information is essential much sooner for making timely decisions locally and regionally.

A transformative capability now is within reach to provide detailed projections of the Earth system globally at the scale of local weather, as well as unprecedented insight regarding sources of ESM biases and uncertainties.

Building upon previous discussions and published studies, the Summit will convene an international group of experts from academia, government, industry and non-profit organizations to examine the practicability of co-designing a specialized computational system and modeling framework that supports frontier Earth system science research and climate projection using kilometer-scale global resolution. The summit also will address how output from global high-resolution climate projections can be used–especially locally and regionally–in making decisions in areas such as economics, urban and regional planning, risk, insurance, health, agriculture, energy and transportation.

Hosted at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and facilitated by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the summit’s in-person activities are by invitation only. However, all summit activities will be available for interested parties to view in a live-streamed feed or afterward in recorded videos. A final report will also be available on this website once the summit has concluded.

Consult this website for ongoing updates.

• ESMs Today and Tomorrow and the Many Roles to be Played by AI
• Contours of a Special-Purpose System and Other Options
• Planning and Executing a Major International Project
• Expected Benefits