Report - CMIP 2026 Community Workshop in Kyoto, Japan by Tina Gier

From March 9 to 13, I had the pleasure of attending the CMIP 2026 Community Workshop in Kyoto, Japan. As a climate scientist, it was a privilege to have a conference on the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) in the same location where the Kyoto Protocol was established. It is a beautiful conference center in the brutalist style next to a lake populated with both koi fish and swans. The conference started withan overview of the CMIP7 science questions and a report on the Assessment Fast Track status, highlighting the tight deadlines for including any new research into the upcoming IPCC Assessment Report 7. One of my personal highlights as a developer for ESMValTool was the launch of the Rapid Evaluation Framework (REF). The REF is envisioned to be a community owned evaluation framework built upon existing community evaluation packages that aims to disseminate basic model evaluation upon publication of the model output. ESMValTool is one of the four tools currently used by the REF, the only European tool, as well as the only tool that is currently CMIP7 ready: yay us! The REF was received very well, with many suggestions for further expansions. Coming from a terrestrial carbon cycle background, during my poster presentation and also during the breaks I met with some colleagues from that community and discussed possible diagnostics to include in both ESMValTool and potentially also in REF. It was a rewarding meeting for me that renewed old collaborations, forged new ones - and left me with a lot of extra work for the coming months. After working mostly on technical developments lately, it was nice reconnecting with the science and seeing all the new emerging topics and questions to be tackled with CMIP7.

The workshop also aimed to be quite inclusive, with sessions about better inclusion for the Global South, as well as time dedicated to an Early Career Researcher (ECR) workshop, to promote networking and avenues for ECRs to contribute to establishes structures. In the case of CMIP, the “Fresh Eyes on CMIP” initiative was presented, which aims to include the unique insight and fresh perspective ECRs bring. We also had a number in a colored circle on our workshop badges, with a red color denoting an ECR and a blue one a senior researcher who was meant to be a mentor. It was quite hard to match the numbers, but funnily enough my mentor was my colleague from the Met Office in the UK who also works with ESMValTool. Later we found another ECR with the same number - who works at AWI in Bremerhaven. The world can truly feel small!

During the conference dinner, the hosts promoted the Japanese culture by inviting both a band using traditional Japanese drums, as well as a calligrapher artist who painted a blank canvas to the beat of the drums spelling out the word “climate”. In general, Japan seems to be an existence between tradition and modernity. Traditional buildings - temples, castles and old homes - are surrounded by the usual concrete buildings so typical of modern times. Warned against their prevalent use of cash, as a German it’s just life as usual with smaller family-led restaurants often being cash only. Meanwhile you find drink machines around every corner, a museum that upon entering greets you with social robots and high-speed trains that are actually on time.

I was lucky to be there in March when plum blossoms are showing and you can see the first cherry blossoms - by the time I left, Tokyo had many parks in full bloom. Though beware - each tree blooming early will be flooded with tourists and natives with their cameras! Japan is a very popular tourist destination, which can be seen at the hordes surrounding the hotspots and viral attractions. Sometimes you can barely move: While it is touching to see how silent the Memorial Museum in Hiroshima was even when the first rooms were crowded to the point of not being able to move freely, I’m sure some of the stories would have hada stronger impact if you didn’t have to worry about being squeezed from all sides. For many of these tourist hotspots I’d recommend to look on from afar and then moving to the not-so known places which are still beautiful. Even in the main tourist cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo, you can find quiet places outside the tourist hotspots, just by walking 5 minutes beyond the nearest station in most cases. Sometimes the parks and temples I found by randomly walking through the city left a stronger impression than the main attractions. Temples with less tourists have a serene atmosphere that hits different than when you have to find your way between 5 tripods, 30 selfie sticks, tourists facetiming their family “look where I am” and just the general mass of people. To crown a successful trip, I got a certificate for flying over the north pole on the way back - and I can confirm it’s still covered in ice!