ECCO Summer School 2025

19 - 30 May Pacific Grove, California
A two-week course on ocean state estimation and NASA's Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) project.

About the 2025 ECCO Summer School

Join us for an in-person, hands-on exploration of ocean state estimation in the beautiful coastal setting of the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California. The ECCO Summer School program will blend lectures, interactive tutorials, peer-to-peer learning, and collaborative team projects to provide a deep dive into the principles, products, applications of ocean state estimation. Taught by leading experts, the summer school program is designed for 20-30 graduate students, postdocs, and early-career scientists eager to advance their understanding of ocean and climate science. There is no registration fee and housing and meals are provided for all accepted applicants. Limited travel support is also available. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, collaborate, and engage with the cutting edge of ocean research!

2025 Event Starts In:

Days Hours Minutes Seconds

Information for Applicants

The application deadline is March 10, 2025. Decisions will be made on or before March 24.

DRAFT Schedule

All times listed below are UTC -7 (Pacific Daylight Time). You might want to consult this Time Zone Map to figure out times in your location.

3:00 - 6:00 pm

Arrival

6:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

9:00 - 10:30 am

Summer School Kick-off

Welcome, Logistics, and Introductions

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ian Fenty, Other Organizers

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

ECCO Overview

History, scientific motiviation, and data products, including the Central Estimate

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ichiro Fukumori, Ian Fenty

12:30 - 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Scientific Applications

Survey of the scientific applications of ECCO products

Tutorial Lead(s)
TBD

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:00 pm

Hands on - Cloud Compute Resources

Getting connected to shared computational resources. OSS JupyterHub, P-Cluster, and efs_ecco.

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ian Fenty, Ou Wang

5:00 - 5:45 pm

Hands on - ECCO Analysis Tool Overview

Matlab, Python, and Julia libraries and toolboxes and the ECCO Modelling Utilities suite of tools

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ian Fenty, Gael Forget, Ichiro Fukumori

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:00 - 9:00 pm

Student Poster Session 1

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - State Estimation

Introduction to state estimation and adjoint methods

Tutorial Lead(s)

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Hands on - Project Organization with Git

Introduction to using Git for project organization

Tutorial Lead(s)

12:30 - 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - General Circulation of the Global Ocean

High-level overview of the ocean circulation and open questions

Tutorial Lead(s)

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:00 pm

Project Formulation

Open forum to pitch project ideas and form project teams

5:00 - 5:45 pm

Project Team organization

Open time for project organization

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:00 - 9:00 pm

Student Poster Session 2

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Adjoint and its Applications

Adjoint methods in oceanography and applications

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ichiro Fukumori, Ian Fenty

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Hands on - Algorithmic Differentiation

Automatic differentiation concept and tools (TAF & Tapenade)

Tutorial Lead(s)

12:30 - 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - Climate Change and Ocean Warming

Evidence for ocean warming and knowledge gaps

Tutorial Lead(s)

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:00 pm

Hands on - ECCO Modelling Utitities (EMU)

How to use the EMU suite of tools in ocean research

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ichiro Fukumori, Ou Wang

5:00 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

Open time for projects

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Ocean Modeling

The basis of geophysical ocean models

Tutorial Lead(s)

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Hands on - Running ECCO (forward and optimization)

How to reproduce ECCO solutions and conduct basic optimization to reduce model-data misfits

Tutorial Lead(s)
Ou Wang; Ian Fenty

12:30 - 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - Observing Systems

Global ocean and sea-ice observations sytems

Tutorial Lead(s)

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

Open time for projects

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Budgets

Concepts and applications of ocean and sea-ice budget closure

Tutorial Lead(s)

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Hands on - Budgets

How to close budgets in ECCO

Tutorial Lead(s)

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - Sea Level

Concepts in global and regional sea level

Tutorial Lead(s)

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

Open time for projects

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

9:00 - 5:00 pm

Group excursion(s)

TBD

9:00 - 5:00 pm

Free Day

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Climate Change the Global Water Cycle

The Global water cycle in a changing climate

Tutorial Lead(s)
TBD

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Open Project Time

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - Ice Sheet & Ocean Interactions

Observations, Modeling, and Implications

Tutorial Lead(s)

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements, Summary of Previous Day, Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry

Fundamentals and current topics in global ocean biology and biogeochemistry

Tutorial Lead(s)

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Hands on - ECCO Darwin and B-SOSE

The ECCO Darwin and B-SOSE Ocean biogeochemistry state estimates

Tutorial Lead(s)
Matthew Mazloff and Dustin Carroll

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - Sea Ice in the Climate System

Observations and Modeling of Sea Ice

Tutorial Lead(s)

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Regional State Estimates at Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Overview of the various regional state estimation work at SIO

Tutorial Lead(s)

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Open Project Time

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - High resolution Ocean Modeling and Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Modeling

ECCO high resolution ocean and coupled ocean/atmosphere modeling

Tutorial Lead(s)
Chris Hill and Dimitris Menenemlis

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:30 - 9:30 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements and Team Updates

9:30 - 10:30 am

Lecture - Regional State Estimates at UT Austin

Overview of the various regional state estimation work at UT Austin

Tutorial Lead(s)

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Open Project Time

12:30 pm to 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Lecture - Tracking heat pathways in a warming ocean

Tutorial Lead(s)
Gael Forget

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:45 pm

Open Project Time

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Daily Wrap / Updates

Summary of Day, Announcements

7:00 - 8:00 pm

Dinner

8:30 - 9:00 am

Daily Kick-off

Announcements

9:00 - 9:30 am

Team Project Repositories & Project Posters

Guidelines for finalizing team project repositories and final project posters

Tutorial Lead(s)

9:30 - 10:30 am

Open Project Time

Team-led project work

10:30 - 11:00 am

Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 pm

Open Project Time

Team-led project work

12:30 - 2:00 pm

Lunch

2:00 - 3:00 pm

Final Project Presentations (1)

Teams present their work and project posters

3:00 - 3:30 pm

Coffee Break

3:30 - 5:00 pm

Final Project Presentations (2)

Teams present their work and project posters

5:00 - 5:45 pm

ECCO Summer School Reflections

An open discussion on the ECCO summer school experience

Tutorial Lead(s)

5:45 - 6:00 pm

Final Wrap

11:00 am

Depart


Meet the team

The people on this page have helped organize the summer school. You'll find a few specializations listed per person if you're wondering who to reach out to during the event!
Jean-Michel Campin
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Dustin Carroll
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Paola Cessi
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Gaël Forget
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Severine Fournier
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Ichiro Fukumori
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Shreyas Gaikwad
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Chris Hill
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Matthew Mazloff
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Galen McKinley
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Dimitris Menemenlis
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An Nguyen
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Chris Piecuch
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Helen Pillar
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Sarah Purkey
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Mike Wood
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