ACCESS Community Workshop on Land and Coupled Modelling, 31 Aug-2 Sep 2026

ACCESS-NRI, Australia’s Climate Simulator, would like to invite you to the 2026 ACCESS Community Workshop on Land and Coupled Modelling held in Melbourne from 31 August – 2 September 2026.

Latest updates

Registrations are now open!

The key dates for the ACCESS Community Workshop on Land and Coupled Modelling are:

5 May: Abstract submissions open
15 June (midnight, AEST): Abstract submissions close
Late June: Registrations open
early August: Final program available
14 August: Registrations close

The cost of the Workshop registration is AUS$150 (exc GST)

About the workshop

Aims of the workshop

Strengthening the ACCESS research community, by:

Fostering connections and collaboration across community working groups and ACCESS-NRI
Supporting student and Early Career Researchers (ECR) participation
Providing training on the latest modelling and evaluation tools available.

Improving ACCESS modelling capability, by:

Sharing the latest research and findings on earth system/climate and land modelling by the ACCESS community
Discussing priority areas for future development.

Supporting the ACCESS CMIP7 submission, by:

Supporting community involvement in CMIP7 evaluation
Support and help coordinate community publications in the lead up to the IPCC AR7 report
Running hackathons on ACCESS-ESM1.6 evaluation for the CMIP7 Fast Track and ACCESS-CM3 model development/evaluation.

Themes of the Workshop

Coupled modelling

Uses of Earth System Models versus Climate Models
Response of the Earth system to externally forced changes
Ocean-atmosphere-ice interactions
Tropical climate variability and change (e.g. double ITCZ, El Niño Southern Oscillation, tropical Pacific SST trends)
Representation of convection and deep ocean circulation at high latitudes
Pathway towards high resolution coupled modelling with ACCESS.

Land modelling:

Treatment of the carbon cycle in land models
Latest developments in soil moisture and energy dynamics
Characterisation and behaviour of Australian vegetation
Modelling urban environments
Land-atmosphere interactions.

CMIP7:

State of the CMIP7 Fast Track submission (ACCESS-ESM1.6). Spin-up, scenarios and evaluation
Latest developments in ACCESS-CM3, ACCESS-AM3, ACCESS-OM3 and progress towards ACCESS-ESM3
Understanding, attribution and projections using CMIP7 Fast Track experiments: from Australasia to global
Use of the Rapid Evaluation Framework for CMIP7 evaluation & research
New emission-driven scenarios including net zero and overshoots.

We are planning to run two parallel hackathons on the final day of the workshop (Wednesday 2 September):

Analysis of ACCESS models under development
The purpose of this session is to analyse and evaluate the next generation of global ACCESS models, including ACCESS-ESM1.6, ACCESS-CM3 and ACCESS-AM3. The analysis from this hackathon will help guide ongoing model development and will feed into future model evaluation papers.Members of the community will present existing analyses for these models, and will discuss which analyses are missing and ways to improve the existing feedback. Afterwards, feedback and points raised will be actioned. This means working together to create new visualisations by updating or creating new analysis scripts, determining which configuration changes are required to make the requested data available and identify any new experiments which should be prioritised.
CMIP7 fast-track analysis
The purpose of this session is to support the community in developing publications that can support the IPCC AR7 report, due to be submitted to journals by approximately April 2027. Project leaders will self-organise this part of the hackathon. This session will provide a forum collaboration on CMIP7 fast-track paper submissions, including analysis of all models available at the time (including ACCESS-ESM1.6)

Note: Any pre-workshop requirements will be communicated closer to the workshop date. This may include information on data locations, example datasets/content, and any other preparation participants may need to complete beforehand.

Who could benefit from participating?

All the ACCESS Community, especially those researchers interested in land surface and Earth system modelling. We strongly encourage Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and students to attend. We are offering travel scholarships to support students and ECRs presenting at the Workshop and travelling from outside Melbourne. The application process for these will be announced later to all students and ECRs who submit an abstract.

Where and when

This year, the ACCESS Community Workshop will be held in Melbourne, on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

Address: Angliss Institute, 555 La Trobe St, Melbourne VIC 3000

Join us for three exciting days of events from 31 August – 2 September 2026.

Program overview

Day	Time	Session
Day 1 - 31st of August	9:30 – 10:00	Arrival Registration and tea/coffee
	10:00 – 10:15	Housekeeping and Welcome to Country
	10:15 – 10:45	Session 1: Plenary (Keynote speaker)
	10:45 – 11:15	Morning Tea
	11:15 – 12:00	Session 2: Plenary (3 speakers)
	12:00–12:15	Lightning Talks (10 speakers x 2 mins including change over)
	12:15 - 13:00	Lunch
	13:00 - 14:30	Session 3 - 2 Parallel sessions: (6 speakers each)
	14:30 – 15:30	Poster viewing
	15:00 - 15:30	Afternoon Tea
	15:30 - 17:00	Training (Topics TBC)
	18:00 - onwards	Dinner. Food served from 18:30 (Venue TBC)
Day 2 - 1st of September	8:30 – 9:00	Arrival Registration and tea/coffee
	9:00 – 9:05	Housekeeping and Acknowledgement of Country
	9:05 – 09:35	Session 4: Plenary (Keynote speaker)
	09:35 – 10:20	Session 5: Plenary (3 speakers ESM, Land, CMIP7)
	10:20 – 10:30	Lightning Talks (10 speakers x 2 mins including change over)
	10:30 – 11:00	Morning tea
	10:30 - 11:30	Poster viewing
	11:30 - 12:30	Session 6: Plenary (4 speakers)
	12:30 – 13:30	Lunch
	13:30 - 15:00	Session 6: Plenary (3 speakers)
	15:00 - 15:30	Afternoon tea
	15:30 - 17:00	Training
	18:00 onwards	Social event
Day 3 - 2nd of September	8:30 – 9:00	Arrival Registration and tea/coffee
	9:00 – 9:05	Housekeeping and Acknowledgement of Country
	9:05 – 10:30	All Day Hackathon and analysis discussion – CMIP7 and analysis of evaluation ACCESS models (ESM1.6 , CM3 and AM3)
	10:30 – 11:00	Morning Tea
	11:00 – 12:30	All Day Hackathon and analysis discussion – CMIP7 and analysis of evaluation ACCESS models (ESM1.6 , CM3 and AM3)
	12:30 – 13:30	Lunch
	13:30 - 15:00/em>	All Day Hackathon and analysis discussion – CMIP7 and analysis of evaluation ACCESS models (ESM1.6 , CM3 and AM3)
	15:00 - 15:30	Afternoon tea and closing

Presenting at the workshop

Presenting at the workshop? Check out our oral presentations and posters guidelines.

Accessibility

We are committed to making this event accessible to everyone. If there any specific access requirements that we can provide to enable you to attend, please contact us at: access.nri@anu.edu.au.

Covid-safe plan

We acknowledge COVID-19 still active in the community. Check out our efforts to minimise the risk of SARS CoV-2 infection in all our events:
ACCESS-NRI COVID Safe Plan

This plan was prepared with advice from aerosol expert Professor Robyn Schofield from the University of Melbourne and member of the ACCESS-NRI Board and OzSage.

Program Committee members

The ACCESS-NRI team would like to thank the members of the Workshop Program Committee for their valuable contributions and time:

Lachlan Whyborn, Chair (ACCESS-NRI)
Wilma Huneke (Monash University)
Zoe Gillett (Bureau of Meteorology)
Alex Norton (CSIRO)
Julie Arblaster (Monash University)
Spencer Wong (ACCESS-NRI)
Himadri Saini (University of Melbourne)
Aditya Sengupta (University of Melbourne)

Communications and organisation:

Natalia Bateman (ACCESS-NRI)
Jenny Flett (ACCESS-NRI)

Contact

If you have any questions, please direct them to: access.nri@anu.edu.au.

Please note that this event may be recorded and published by the ACCESS-NRI through its communication channels. This may include your contributions during the sessions.