General context
WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) is a research and education-focused institute designed to help tackle the climate change challenge and thereby enhance the resilience of human environmental systems. It does so by strengthening the research capacity and infrastructure in West Africa related to climate change by pooling the expertise of ten West African countries and Germany. The West African countries include: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo. For 2018-2021, WASCAL will implement its research and action plan (WRAP2.0) to carry out the “Demand-driven Research for Effective Actions to Adapt and Mitigate Climate Change and Variability in West Africa (DREAM)”. To achieve this objective, four Flagship Programs (FP) are framed:
– Flagship Program 1: Climate and Environmental Services
– Flagship Program 2: Resilient Socio-ecological Landscapes
– Flagship Program 3: Sustainable Intensification and Food Security
– Flagship Program 4: Climate Modeling and Seasonal Forecasting
While FP4 feeds into FP2 and FP3, all the three of them support a steady provision of climate and environmental services (i.e. FP1) for the ECOWAS countries. This puts the climate modeling and seasonal forecasting activity at the center of the WRAP2.0 implementation process.
High Performance Computing (HPC) within West Africa
The WASCAL community, including the Competence Center (CoC), the German partners (i.e. KIT) and the graduate schools, carry out climate modeling and seasonal forecasting. Models need to be further developed to fit the West African climate and will be run at high resolution, i.e. at scales required for impacts and adaptation studies. These simulations are computationally expensive and necessitate a HPC environment. The absence of HPC has long undermined the contribution of West African scientists to the development and implementation of international programs such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX). To tackle this issue, affirm our presence and enable us to contribute to the global effort to combat climate change, WASCAL CoC and some of its member countries (e.g. Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire) are in the process of acquiring state-of-the-art HPC systems. While the CoC system and that of Senegal should be fully operational in 2018, Côte d’Ivoire with the assistance of ATOS BULL company will officially open its facility in December this year during the 2017 WASCAL Week (i.e. December 5th to 8th, 2017) at an official ceremony to be attended by his Excellency the Prime Minister of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire on 4th December 2017. This HPC system consists of 576 processors for a total of 8064 cores along with a storage capacity of 1.3 Petabytes (1 Petabyte = 1000 Terrabytes).
The Workshop
Along with the opening of this HPC facility, WASCAL is jointly organizing (with the Government of Côte d’Ivoire) an International Workshop on HPC applications for West African climate and environmental systems to be held from the 7th to the 8th of December, 2017 at the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Pole Scientifique de Berginville, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
The main objective of the workshop is to provide a forum for HPC users to share their experience and explore opportunities for fully unlocking the potential of the system to drive innovations while addressing big challenges.
The workshop will consist of a series of keynote addresses to put the issue of HPC at the center of interest, invited talks to showcase existing HPC projects and climate/environmental applications (e.g. DKRZ, ICTP, CHPC, etc. ) and participants presentations. A list of invited speakers is below (see last page).
Participation
The workshop is intended for scientists and graduate students working in the areas of Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics, Climatology, Oceanography, Physics, Mathematics and Modeling. A limited number (up to 50) of participants is envisioned, with proven experience in HPC applications and a strong interest in using the system for regional climate/environmental studies. The workshop will be conducted in both English and French (translators will be available). Limited funding (including travel grants: flight ticket, accommodation and subsistence) is available for participants from Africa.
How to apply?
Interested candidates can apply by sending an abstract of their presentation and a short CV (not more than 2 pages) to
Sylla.b(at)wascal.org and cc to ndatchoheve(at)yahoo.fr.
Graduate students and early career scientists applying for sponsorship should also include in their application a motivation letter and a recommendation letter.
Deadline: 20th of October 2017
Contact info
· Dr. Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla (WASCAL CoC, Ouaga, Burkina): +226 76 89 66 70
· Dr. Evelyne Toure’ (UFHB, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire): +225 07 07 89 69
Dates of workshop:7th-8th of December, 2017
Venue :Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Pole Scientifique de Berginville, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire