 All right, hello, everyone. I'm Katie Wolfson with the UCAR Center for Science Education, and I'm so excited to welcome all of you to a new school year, a new season of Meet the Experts, where we get to connect students and people like you all over the world with experts here at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Now, where is the National Center for Atmospheric Research, you might ask? Well, we are here in the United States in Boulder, Colorado, nestled up against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at the NCAR Mesa Laboratory. All right, NCAR Mesa Laboratory. And here at the NCAR Mesa Laboratory, we have all sorts of different experts who are working on earth science and atmospheric science to learn more about our world and help our society in our world. And one of my favorite things about working here is that we have so many different types of experts. So we have folks who are scientists and researchers, we have engineers, we have aircraft pilots and mechanics, we have artists, we have chefs, we have educators like myself, and I love getting the chance to introduce you to all sorts of different experts. So we have a lot of different experts that are gonna be over course of this school year and we are kicking it off with an amazing person today. We have with us a climate modeler, we have Cecilia Ney, who is with the NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Lab. And she is gonna tell you a bit about her job and how she got her job and what she is excited about today during our Meet the Experts. Now during this program, I want all of you to feel free to ask questions in the chat at any time. We will have time for Q&A at the end too and our classroom on camera, I might come to you to see if you wanna unmute and ask your questions live. And if any other classrooms are joining us too that wanna do that, you can type to me in the chat. So without further ado, I'm gonna hand it over to Cecilia and we are gonna learn a bit more about your job as a climate modeler. Okay, thank you so much, Katie. And yes, Katie say I'm a climate modeler at the National Center of Atmospheric Research. You see there, she's going to give you another view from the center. And when I say I'm a climate modeler, people ask me, what's the difference between climate and weather? And then to illustrate the difference between climate and weather, I'm going to ask a very simple question. What's the temperature in Boulder today? And I would like to start a poll about this. Right everyone, we have a poll for you. We wanna hear from you early on in the program and we want to know how do you think Cecilia knows the temperature in Boulder, Colorado today? I am going to launch a poll that you can answer to in my classroom that I have. Teacher, if you wanna pull your students and then type in the leading answer, but we are gonna launch a Zoom poll now asking, how does Cecilia know the temperature in Boulder today? Does she wake up extra early and run her climate model? Does she Google what is the temperature in Boulder? Or does she check with the groundhog living in her backyard? So let's go ahead and see what our students think. Does she run her climate model? Does she Google it? Does she check with that groundhog living in her backyard? We're gonna give it about five more seconds to get those answers in. Get those final answers in. All right, we're gonna close the poll now. And it looks like 80% said run your climate model, 20% say you Google it. Nobody thinks you have a groundhog in the backyard. Yeah, no, I don't. I do have a cat, but she's not really helpful to tell me what's the temperature in Boulder. But indeed the right answer, I don't run my climate model to know the temperature in Boulder but today I Google it and then it's how I know how to dress. Basically, I'm going to type temperature in Boulder and it's going to show something like this. This is the temperature of yesterday because I needed to prepare the slide yesterday, but it will appear like this in red. You have the maximum temperature. Yesterday it was 67, the minimum temperature in blue, the minimum temperature. And we can wonder, is it always now the same temperature? This was the temperature on October 4th, 2022. Is it always the same temperature on October 4th? And I'm going to ask you what you think about this. Let's have a type in the chat. Do you think the temperature is always the same on October 4th every year? And I'm pretty sure no. I got a big no. And this is correct. Probably all of you know this. If you can go to the next picture, then it showed the temperature in Boulder for the last 20 years. Then yesterday, as I say earlier, it was about 67, maximum 45. But if you look at last year, it was much warmer. It was 82 Fahrenheit and a minimum of 47. But we can find here, for example, in 2013, it was only 56 maximum and 32 minimum. It was freezing at night. Then this is the weather. Then the temperature will vary really from one year to the next. And then if you do the average of all this temperature, it's what we call the climate. The climate on October 4th, the mean, it's maximum of 69 and a minimum of 32. And the way you can think about it, the climate, it's what you expect. And the weather, it's what you get. And I can do here a little comparison if you go to the next picture, about this is a group of Boy Scouts. It was fifth grader and I animate this group of Boy Scouts for several years. And here they were doing a challenge on a big roll. But you can see that they are all different size. And if I ask you what's the size of a fifth grader, you see that some are quite tall, the yellow guy here, but then some are shorter, like the little guy with stripes just above my head. And this is the weather. They are all different size. And the climate of the size of fifth grader would be about five feet, nine inches. Then this is basically the difference between climate and weather. Then now I'm going to explain, we know what's climate and I'm going to now talk about climate model. And the climate model, it's basically a virtual world. The virtual world, it's a computer simulation representation of a world. And I'm sure that many of you are already familiar with virtual world. Another example of a virtual world, it's Minecraft. Then if you play Minecraft, you can type in the chat that you play Minecraft. Or if you play Force Knight, you can type that you play Force Knight. I miss Samara's class. If anyone wants to raise your hand if anybody there plays Fortnite or Minecraft, we can see you there. Yeah. Do you have some folks? Yeah, I see folks that probably play Minecraft. Okay, a lot of kids play Minecraft. And indeed I have two sons and my oldest son is at college, but he still play Minecraft for fun. And I ask him, can you create the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Minecraft? And look what he did for me. Then I feel it's pretty good representation. Then basically he did a computer simulation representation of my National Center of Atmospheric Research. And he can even, it was raining that day. Then I say, can you add some rain? And then can you add some rain, Katie? Yeah. And yeah, it's raining on the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Often we get blue sky, but it was raining that day. And my climate model is a little bit similar in some way to Minecraft. It's also very different in many other way, but it's a virtual world. And here you see on the planet view from the space on the left side. And on the right side, I have a view of my climate model that allow me to do a modellization of the Earth's climate. Then now the next question, it's how do we build our climate model? And I'm going to do again an analogy with Minecraft. Then you are the people, we saw several people play Minecraft. And in Minecraft, you use building blocks. I don't play Minecraft, I just play climate model. But we have building blocks. My son told me it's an inventory. And you have on the left side, inventory of Minecraft. And my building block in my climate model, it's a physical equation, a physical formula. And on the other side, it's not really the equation that go with my model, but I found this picture was very illustrating. Well, the kind of equation that we have in the climate model, then you see you have a little rabbit that breeze, O2 and release CO2, then you have sunlight, lightning, trees. Then we use physical law in the climate model, physical equation. And if you don't know what's a physical equation, oh, I have two me, a little me and a big me, then you have two physical equation. And I don't know if you can recognize the guy that see on the picture, you can type it in the chat. He's very famous. And he wrote a very famous physical equation that's called E equal MC square. And it means that the energy is equal the mass times the speed of light square. Basically a physical formula define a new quantity, in this case, the energy in term of base quantity. And in this case, the mass and the speed of light. And the guy, I don't know if somebody typed the name. I see somebody maybe is trying to type it in. Ah, Albert Einstein. Yes, correct. He's from North Carolina. Yes. Good job. Yeah. Okay, then this is how we built our climate model. But that's it. It's not enough to have building block, our physical equation in the climate model. We need also something else that's called the climate forcing. And if we go to the next slide, we are going to see climate forcing. Basically a climate forcing, it's something that come from outside your climate system itself, but that influence the climate. And I asked my son, what would be a good analogy to a climate forcing? And he told me the creeper. Then the creeper, it's something that's come from outside your Minecraft world. It show up suddenly, but it can influence your Minecraft world by exploding and making a lot of damage. And the climate forcing that I have in my climate model, it's a little bit similar to this creeper. Then the first example, it's volcanoes. Then volcanoes, when you have a big volcanoes eruption, it will send up aerosol very high in the atmosphere. It can go all the way up to the stratosphere and it will put aerosol that cool off the climate. Then another example of climate forcing, it's the solar light. Then the solar light that we get, it's not always constant. You have an 11 year annual cycle that you can see with the white light on the figure over here. It varies. That it has an influence on our climate. And something also that has an influence on the climate, it's the atmospheric gases and one that you are probably familiar with. It's the CO2. And the CO2, when we release a lot of CO2 on the atmosphere, it will have an influence on our climate. And if you look at the top row and the bottom row, then the top row, it's what we call natural forcing. It's not something that human can change. You cannot stop volcanic eruption or you cannot really stop the solar light. But the bottom row, the atmospheric gases, the CO2, it's what we call anthropogenic forcing. And it means that it's human made forcing into the climate. And there are other climate forcing, but here I just give you these three big climate forcing to give you a sense what we need to include in the model. And then I'm going to show you another animation. Then can you go to the other animation? Then now we know how to build a climate model. We have building block plus climate forcing. And then it allows us to build our climate model. But why do we want even to build a climate model? And the reason we want to build a climate model, it's because it allows us to answer questions about the Earth's climate via the scientific method. And if you have been in the science fair, you probably heard about the scientific method. Then I would like, can you type in the chat if you have participated in a science fair? I would be interested or you can raise your hand. I do. In Samara's class, we can see if we can see if you can say it. Oh yeah, I can see some hands. Okay, good job, good job. I think it's really good to participate in science fair. Then if you haven't done it yet, I think you should. And I, good job for those who did. And if you haven't, you can still sign up maybe for next year or this year. I don't know the deadline. Vincent also has participated in the science fair. Yeah, yeah. Then the scientific method, basically you ask a question. You have, you make a hypothesis and then you do an experiment and you do an analysis. And here I'm doing something that you can use in the science fair. I'm going to ask a question. Why do we keep milk in the fridge? And I'm sure you have all a good idea. It took a very easy example. And it's that cold conserve milk longer. And you can design an experiment. Here I'm showing an example. You can take three bottles of milk, put one in the fridge at the temperature of 35 Fahrenheit. You can leave one in the house. Let's say that you have fusing air conditioning and it's at a constant temperature of 70 Fahrenheit. And then you can put one in your parent card and say that I do this and to see how long it takes to turn back. And every day you will go test the milk and you see that on day one, it looks when you just put all this bottle of milk, that's good. On day two, the one in the car have turned really, really bad. By day four, the one on the countertop has turned bad. But by day fifth, the one in the fridge is still good. Then your hypothesis is correct. Then this is what you will use in the science fair. And it's exactly what we use to answer questions about the Earth's climate. Then I'm going to show now to do a question that I can ask. And I can ask if CO2 keep rising, what will happen to the sea ice? And you see a little polar bear that's wondering, is it ice or is it water? And my hypothesis here, I can do an hypothesis. It's that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free by 2050. And then I can, what do I need to do to do this? Then I need to do climate forcing in my model. I told you earlier that atmospheric gases were climate forcing. And I'm going to gradually increase the CO2 in my model and run the model until 2100. And you see on the little plot here, you have a black line. It's the historical value of the CO2. But then in the future, I don't know yet what will be the CO2, but I can do assumption what the CO2 will be. It's what we call scenario. Then if we just do business as usual, you have the red line, the CO2 keep increasing. And then you see as a line, the yellow, the green and the blue where we are trying to reduce the way that we do CO2. And then after, I'm going to, yeah, can you go back to the last picture? Yeah, and after this, I'm going to do my analysis because I'm interested here in the Arctic sea ice. And I have the globe here. And I'm going to turn it to see the North Pole. And it's the view that you are seeing on the plot below. And the view that you are seeing on the plot here, it's a view of the Arctic sea ice. And we are going to do a lot of analysis about this. And then we are going to show you a movie, how it's going to look. Then this is a movie and we are starting the movie. And at the beginning, we are in the 1800. And in white, you see the sea ice. It's the sea ice in September. It's when the sea ice is the lowest at the end of the summer. And you see that the sea ice, now we are in the year 2030. And you see that the sea ice start to be really reduced. And then by the end of the 21 century, 2100, there is no more sea ice in my climate model. Then this is maybe you can run the animation again and then in white is the sea ice. You see it at the beginning in oops, sorry. You see it at the beginning. There was a lot of sea ice in the Arctic ocean. And then you see that as we are going through time, then the sea ice, it vary really year to year. And it's the same as my temperature and border. And now you see that the sea ice start to be lower and lower. And then by the end of 2100, the Arctic ocean will be ice free. We had a question that popped into the chat asking, Cecile, what forcing is used for this animation? Is it business as usual? Do you know? This one, I think it was the one that was using business and usual. It's not really the forcing that I was showing in the previous plot. It's an older representation of the forcing, but it was business as usual. Great question. It's a good question. Then this is basically the way that we predict the future in our atmospheric model. I want to say that my part of the model, me, I don't run all this simulation of the future. I build a climate model. And then after I hand it off to other people that are going to run it to run to the future. And now we have this climate model and I want to switch a little bit and to run about coding a language. And I don't know if anybody in the classroom has been doing any coding. If you have done any coding, please type the language that you have used. And our climate model use a language that's called Fortrand. And I have just show here, don't really worry about the detail, but it's just an example of Fortrand look. And then Minecraft was, there are many, many coding language. Minecraft was written in Java, even that in more recent version, they use C++. It seems that, what, Forstnite is written in say++. And another language that I use a lot when I do plots, it's Python. You see a picture of Python in the lower right of the screen. And then we have people using Python. Kale is using HTML, Python, Scratch. She has some stuff in Minecraft and Java. Our school in North Carolina uses Python for coding. Okay, I'm really impressed. We've got some future climate modelers in the classroom, I think. Exactly. Okay, then we have this. And then now you have an example here of the Fortrand language. But if I was to print CSM on a printer, it live on a computer and I don't have to print it, but it will be about 35,000 pages. And here just to give you a sense what it is, this is a big book. It's a book about climate system modeling. Don't really worry about the book itself, but this is a big book and it's about 800 pages. Then I would have probably about 40 of this book in my climate model. Then it's really a big model and to run the climate model, we need a very big computer. And Katie is going to show you a picture of the computer that we are using. Our computer is called Cheyenne and it can do many, many, many, many, many computation per seconds. And it's so big, it's about the size of tennis court. Then this is, yeah. You probably don't need this to use to play Minecraft, but if you want it, you will run really, really fast. You could run really fast with all that, yeah. And this computer is at our NCAR Wyoming Supercomputing Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming. So this is our NCAR computer that you get to use and run the climate model off of. Yes. Okay, then this is what I wanted to tell you about the climate model, but I have also as a part of my job that I'm really passionate about, as a thing that I do, and I'm not doing all this building of the climate model, then something that I do, I know I'm really an expert of running this climate model and I have tutorial, then this is me here at the top here. And it's big class that we have one week during the summer and we will have students coming from all over the world to learn about our climate model. And you see it's university student, but sometimes you have even older researcher that you see at the top, usually they're a little bit shy, then they go at the back of the room. But yeah, this is one thing that I do. Something else that I do, I have been going to classroom or sometimes I had student that came, at NCAR we have a classroom here and here it was a class that I was doing for little cup scout and we had my other son in the front row over there and they came to learn about climate model. Something that also I love to do, it's some outreach program then can you go to the other picture? Then yeah, then last weekend we had, there was a big event in Lafayette, Colorado and we had to anchor booth and we were welcoming people to learn a little bit about physics and spinning science. And a big event that we have, unfortunately this year it has been canceled because of COVID, but it's super science Saturday. I hope it will come again next year. If you are in Colorado, you should absolutely come to see it. And you see a picture of this event. We were putting mantas in a caulk and it will make like big volcanoes of caulk. And it was in the seminar room of NCAR, but you see that we had put a lot of blanket on the ground to protect the floor. Then this is as a kind of activity that I do when I'm not working on the climate model and it's all I wanted to tell you today. Thank you so much for sharing all of that about climate modeling and your job, Cecile. We are gonna open it up to questions now for any of our folks off camera. Feel free to type in the chat if you have questions. For our on-camera school, I would love to have students come up to the webcam and ask their questions nice and loud. Maybe I'll come to you for two questions in a minute. While people are getting organized there, I have a question for you, Cecile, to get us started. Is how did you become a climate modeler? Oh yeah, this is a story I like to share because I have a very unusual past and maybe I had to share with you a picture earlier. Then as you can tell from my accent, I was not born in United States. I was born in Belgium and I speak French. French is my native language and I can say you certainly French after if you want, but I was born in Belgium and when I was in my teens, I was really passionate about education and I did a degree in psychology and science of education. And after with this degree, I moved to Africa in Senegal and you see a picture of a classroom there where I became a kindergarten teacher for a year. And it was really a very good experience to travel over there. But while I was in Africa, there were a comet then went over and I became really, really interested in astronomy and astrophysics. And I went back to Belgium because I was only there for one year in Senegal and I did a degree in physics. And after I bachelor in physics, after my bachelor for 10 years, I work in a physics lab at the University of Liège in Belgium and I work on different topics like supraconductor, electric battery, then I work on synchrotor radiation, I work on various topics. And it was in the 90s and people were starting to talk more and more about climate modeling and I became very interested into this, especially that it's close, I had studied physics and it's kind of close. And then in my 30s, I decided with my boyfriend that now my husband, we moved to Alaska and I did a degree in atmospheric science. And here you have a picture in Alaska in winter, it was minus 43 in this picture. Then it was, it can be very cold, but also we really love our experience over there. And then with this degree, we moved to Boulder Corrado where I have worked, we have been here for a little bit over 20 years and I work at NOAA and now I've been at NCAR for almost 20 years. Then this is my path and I like to share this because for young people, sometimes when you are in middle school and in high school, you wonder, oh, what should I study? This is going to decide all my life. And I just want to say that you should always follow your dream and there is also room to change career if you want at some point. Wonderful, thanks so much for sharing that Cecile. It looks like unfortunately our on-camera class had to go because their bell just rang. But we would love to answer any questions in the chat that anybody has. I see Vincent has a hand raised, I don't know if you have a question that you want to type to us in the chat. But please, Cecile, look at it. Oh, little me and Vicky, I love this. So I was also curious, Cecile, here's another question for you. Who uses your climate model? Oh, this is a really good question. Indeed, our climate model is free. We built it and you can download it from the internet for free. Then it's another difference between Minecraft and false night that are not free. Then you can download it for free. The only issue is that you need a very big computer to run it, then you need to have access to this kind of computer. But we have 1000 and 1000 of climate scientists using our model all over the planet. A lot of people in United States, we have graduated students doing the thesis using our model. We have a lot of people doing research at university. We have even private company using our model. Then it's really a model that's used by a lot, a lot of people all over the planet. I get questions from Asia, from India, I get even some questions from Africa, from Europe. There are people that use our climate model absolutely everywhere. Is there, do you have any favorite stories from people that you've taught to use the climate model and how they've gone on to use it? Yes, I do have a story because I was showing earlier a picture of this big, maybe you can bring back the picture of this tutorial that we have during the summer. And then Kara, if you don't have the picture, but we have this big tutorial where we have students and then this is the tutorial. And a few years back, I had, and it's not a single story. It happened several times, but I had a student that took a class there and after they became, they graduated, they became a post-doc. And even later on, they got a job at the University of Colorado and now they are teaching other people how to run the model also and how to learn about climate science. And I really love to see young people starting and growing and growing much bigger than me. That's wonderful. Oh, we have a question in the chat asking, are there any other models that people use? Yes, then I guess you are thinking as a climate model, there are several climate models. At the beginning, United States had two big climate model, one that was developed in Princeton at GFDL, it's another center and they were the one developed in Kara. Now there is more climate model. There was one at NASA that NASA is building its own climate model and they have even several version. DOE is also now a climate model too, and a climate model in Europe. Then there are a lot of climate model and usually when we are doing this experiment, we are comparing climate model together to see if all the model give the same result. Which models, or is that something that the IPCC that people might have heard about works on? Yes, then when we do this kind of simulation, it's called, we have the CMIP, it's a model intercomparison. They will give you climate forcing and you will use this climate forcing in your model and we do a lot of simulation and then we have a lot of scientists looking at all this simulation and we will give the science and then you will have policy maker that will, or people looking at mitigation, adaptation that will look at this. This is not part of my job. Yeah, it does really the science. I build a model, but after you will have people run the model and then other people will analyze the change that we can have in the climate and can do mitigation about it. We have another question in the chat of, did the other models give a similar result or the same result? Yes, there are some variation in between the model but all the model will give, when you look at the CIs, all model that can produce CIs, it will be gone sometimes in the 21st century. So some of the details might vary a little bit but the end result, the models all agree. Yes, and not, yeah, there will be variation but they will get the same kind of result. It seems really complex with our earth and all the different, although those are physical equations, all the different parts of the earth system. How does your model kind of, how does the CSM model take into account all of the different parts of the earth system? Yeah, then this is a good question and I get the picture, I don't know if you have access to it, I get some, yeah. Then our model is called community earth system model and maybe I try not to say the word CSM today but sometimes it's this nickname, it's all the initial CSM and it's not a single model. We are building several models, there is an atmospheric model, a land model, we have the ocean, we also have a model of the sea ice, the land ice and the river and it's all models that are built separately and then all this model are talking to each other to make a simulation of the earth and it was the simulation that I was showing earlier then maybe we can go back during the question, you can put this as the background, one of the simulation of the earth animation. Yeah, and this is basically by having all this model together, we are running this simulation of the earth. Amazing, amazing. What's your favorite part of your job, Cecile? Me, but what I really, really like, I was showing you this, I'm really passionate about the model and I like to help other people about running the model and I'm also the, I didn't say this, I'm a climate modeler, but I'm also the liaison for the atmospheric model and when people, early I was showing you the different model that we have into CSM and when people have problem how to run the model, the atmospheric model and also the old complete model with everything, I'm not a specialist of land, ocean, sea ice and land ice and river, but I am a specialist of the atmosphere and then when people have question, usually they come to me with question, we have also this big tutorial that I was showing that we organized during the summer, it's a one week summer school, this is my favorite week of the year then I like to share my knowledge with other people. Right, last call for questions, we are about to wrap up if anyone has any final questions, we would love to hear them. I'll do a final question for you unless one comes in in the next minute, but Cecile, we think that a lot of our experts here have different superpowers that helps them do their job. So if we're going to think through, what is your superpower that helps you do your job? What would you say it is? Yeah, this is a good question. Okay, then I would say my superpower, it's that I'm very, very organized, that I take note of everything, I keep track of everything, I make table, I make summary, and then if you ask me sometimes, oh, what about this simulation that you did like five years ago and I can come with all the description of what I did? Then I would say this is my superpower, that it's my organization in my work to do summary and to take note about everything. Wonderful, thank you so much Cecile. Yeah, I think it's so important to think through, what are those different skills that help us do our job and do our work? So thank you so much for coming on and joining us today and sharing with us about your job, about climate models. We hope that all of you had a great time. I definitely learned a lot. So thanks for joining us. We hope you'll join us again next month on November 9th. Hope we're gonna bump in here so I can hit my slide here. And we hope you'll join us again next month on Wednesday, November 9th for Meet the Expert, Predicting the Weather for Renewable Energy. The registration for that is opening up today, so I hope that we will see you there so we can talk more about that. So thank you again so much Cecile. Thanks everybody. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. And we'll see you next time. Bye.