Jonathan Brown with Centre researchers.
Experts from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes have taken part in a “hackathon” to help improve the use of vital climate models.
According to Rasmussen University a “hackathon” is “…an event, usually hosted by a tech company or organization, where programmers get together for a short period of time to collaborate on a project. The participants work rapidly and often work without sleep to achieve their task, as the events generally only last 24 hours or take place over a weekend.”
Led by the Consortium for Ocean Sea Ice Modelling in Australia (COSIMA) and Dr Navid Constantinou, 38 experts from across Australia collaborated to develop and share code for use with ocean climate models.
“We make examples of common ways that people analyse ocean model output. Then we put those examples in an open-source repository so they’re available for everyone” says Dr Constantinou.
The hackathon saw a wide range of coders, experienced and emerging come together to collaborate.
“Everyone from students who are just getting started with ocean models, to researchers who want to do some advanced analysis. People can scroll through the examples, find what suits their needs, and then take it and modify it” says Dr Constantinou.
Code developed through the hackathon is available for anyone to use and a tutorial developed by the group has even been recognised by some of the key code developers.