GeoRoundup: the highlights of EGU Journals published during June!

Each month we feature specific Divisions of EGU and during the monthly GeoRoundup we put the journals that publish science from those Divisions at the top of the Highlights roundup. For June, the Divisions we are featuring are: Ocean Sciences (OS), Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences (NP), and Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (GI). They are served by the journals: Ocean Sciences (OS), Geoscientific Model Development (GMD), Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics (NPG), Weather and Climate Dynamics (WCD) and Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems (GI).

Featured highlights

Geoscientific Model Development:

Pace v0.2: a Python-based performance-portable atmospheric model – 14 June 2023

It is hard for scientists to write code which is efficient on different kinds of supercomputers. Python is popular for its user-friendliness. We converted a Fortran code, simulating Earth’s atmosphere, into Python. This new code auto-converts to a faster language for processors or graphic cards. Our code runs 3.5–4 times faster on graphic cards than the original on processors in a specific supercomputer system.

Ocean Science:

Response of the sea surface temperature to heatwaves during the France 2022 meteorological summer – 09 June 2023

In the summer of 2022, France experienced a series of unprecedented heatwaves. This study is the first to examine the response of sea surface temperatures to these events, using spatial operational data and attributing the observed abnormally warm SSTs to atmospheric forcings. The findings of this study underscore the critical need for an efficient and sustainable operational system to monitor alterations that threaten the oceans in the context of climate change.

Seasonal overturning variability in the eastern North Atlantic subpolar gyre: a Lagrangian perspective – 23 June 2023

This study uses the trajectories of water parcels traced within an ocean model simulation to identify the pathways responsible for the seasonal cycle of dense water formation (overturning) in the eastern subpolar North Atlantic. We show that overturning seasonality is due to the fastest water parcels circulating within the eastern basins in less than 8.5 months. Slower pathways set the average strength of overturning in this region since water parcels cannot escape intense wintertime cooling.

Weather and Climate Dynamics:

What distinguishes 100-year precipitation extremes over central European river catchments from more moderate extreme events? – 12 June 2023

In this study, we analyse the generic atmospheric processes of very extreme, 100-year precipitation events in large central European river catchments and the corresponding differences to less extreme events, based on a large time series (~1200 years) of simulated but realistic daily precipitation events from the ECMWF. Depending on the catchment, either dynamical mechanisms or thermodynamic conditions or a combination of both distinguish 100-year events from less extreme precipitation events.