Overview
The ESiWACE3 hackathon on the compression of weather and climate model data will be held from the afternoon of Tuesday, 15 September to the evening of Thursday, 17 September 2026 at ECMWF in Bonn, Germany and virtually.
The hackathon will bring together the expertise of weather/climate researchers and compression developers to investigate which compression methods and compression error requirements work best to address the urgent problem of the exponentially growing size of model data while preserving important data properties. The outcome will be data compression solutions for the most relevant weather and climate datasets that can be used to significantly and safely reduce their size. We aim for representation of some of the leading data compression teams and the leading modelling teams who are facing the data challenge for their products.
The 2.5-day event will open with a series of short talks and introductory tutorials, followed by a hands-on session. Data compression experts will be given a sample dataset and a list of compression requirements to achieve the maximal compression ratio. Domain scientists will have the chance to apply leading compression to their own datasets. Domain scientists and compression experts will be paired together to produce an efficient and safe configuration by the end.
Attendance
The event is open to general registration plus invited guests. In-person registration will be moderated by the event organisers.
Advance registration is required. Interested participants should complete the registration form before the deadline (see timeline below).
Timeline
27 January: Registration opens
31 July: Registration for in-person attendance closes
31 August: Registration for online attendance closes
