What is your role in ESiWACE?
I am the Coordinator of this project.
What do you appreciate most about your work?
To provide a forum for very motivated and skilled people from all over Europe to work together and to exchange knowledge and opinions. I learn a lot from them.
Which question in climate and weather research interests you the most?
Having a background in both computer science and physical oceanography, I always enjoyed working at the interface of two fascinating fields: Supercomputing and Climate Simulation.
What drives you and what do you want to achieve?
I started working at DKRZ, the German Climate Computing Center, in the late 80s. Back then already, we succesfully helped raise public awareness of the facts and the risks of anthropogenic climate change by supporting some of the first global climate models and by producing videos that made their way into public TV science shows and news casts.
We have seen enormous technical progress since then. In parallel to the evolution in supercomputing, climate models have improved significantly. Climate change is a widely accepted fact, and DKRZ's founder Klaus Hasselmann has received the Nobel Prize in physics for the findings that formed the basis of our work. But the world is still warming, and today's young generation is demanding that society and politcs react.
I hope that the novel models, tools and climate simulations that we enable with projects like ESiWACE will help to finally start mitigating global warming.
Dr. Joachim Biercamp
Department Application Support
Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum GmbH (DKRZ)
Bundesstraße 45a,
D-20146 Hamburg, Germany