Curiosity Meets Supercomputing: ESDE at "Tag der Neugier" (Day of Curiosity) 2025

When professors become tinkerers and scientists turn into storytellers, it must be the “Tag der Neugier” (Day of Curiosity) at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

This year was truly special: JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer, was inaugurated on 5 September at JSC, followed by the "Tag der Neugier" on 7 September. Thus, two major events took place within a week. More than 22,000 visitors of all ages explored the campus and showed tremendous curiosity for the wide range of activities at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC).

Our Earth System Data Exploration (ESDE) team contributed with several highlights:

• WeatherAI Lab: an interactive, machine-learning–based weather forecast visualiser and sandbox. Visitors could start from the day’s actual weather, adjust parameters such as mean sea level pressure, temperature, or humidity across selected regions, and then see how the forecast would evolve in different models over several days. -  Get in touch if you would like to give it a go!
• Posters that invited discussion on key topics: “Weather, Climate and Computers”, and “AI can do anything – even the weather"
• Creative fun for kids with 3D paper Earth models to take home.

The programme was rounded off with a talk by team lead Martin Schultz on “AI foundation models for high-precision climate and weather forecasts". Lively questions and enthusiasm from so many visitors reminded us how much curiosity drives discovery.  - Thanks to the passion and dedication of more than hundred colleagues at JSC, the “Tag der Neugier” became such a success – and we are thrilled that our ESDE team could play a part in this inspiring collective effort to make science come alive for the public.