Bridging the Future of Earth System Modelling – the ESM Summer School 2019

The Earth System Modelling Capacity (ESM) project is a 3-year effort funded by the Helmholtz Association started in April 2017 and involving eight research centres across Germany. The project has a strong knowledge transfer component aiming to provide decision-makers with relevant tools in order to face grand challenges in the near future and to support early career scientists (PhD students and early career postdoctoral researchers) from ESM project partner centres as well as the national and international community in developing and strengthening their knowledge on Earth system modelling, as one of the primary efforts to establish a legacy for the project.

From 9^th to 19^th of September 2019, the ESM summer school was held in Bad Aibling (Germany) with 50 participating students from 26 institutes placed all over the world. A core objective of the school was to train and educate early-career scientists from a wide range of discipline and with a diverse international and gender background to apply cutting edge science in the study of the Earth system and at the same time to engage in a stimulating exercise of knowledge transfer for the project.

During the 10-day summer school, students had four lectures daily about topics related to the Earth system and its components, from atmospheric dynamics to terrestrial modelling, from the modelling of waves and oceans to that of ice sheets and glaciers. The school included practical exercises and hands-on sessions that involved coding and building mini-cluster computers, building on the advanced technical knowledge of ESM partners and scientists. The lectures were held by thirty researchers from the ESM Project’s partner institutes and beyond. Two poster sessions were also organized, where students had the chance to present their work to their peers and to the senior scientists, exchange experiences, share results and receive feedbacks from fellow students and lecturers.

In this presentation, we will present the concept and key features of the summer school, content and organisation, and also offer the students’ feedback collected after the school in an effort to showcase an example of how summer schools remain a powerful mean to value diversities and create an inclusive environment in (Earth system) science.