The computational performance of supercomputers is usually expressed in terms of their theoretical peak performance, or measured with rather simple and easy to handle benchmark codes, like the High-Performance Linpack Benchmark, a measure of the floating-point computing power. These metrics allow to easily rank the performance of computers but have only limited value when it comes to the question of how well a computer system is suited for specific complex applications like weather and climate models. The EU-funded project ESCAPE-2, which ran from 2019 to 2021, therefore developed a benchmark suite called High Performance Weather and Climate Benchmark, in short HPCW, which consists of widely used European weather and climate models and standalone model components (also called dwarfs in the ESCAPE-2 context) that are less complex than the models themselves but represent selected characteristics of the models. After the end of ESCAPE-2, the centre of excellence ESiWACE2 took over the responsibility to establish HPCW as a useful tool for the communities of weather and climate modellers on the one hand, and for computer manufacturers on the other hand. At the end of ESiWACE2 we provide a consolidated and extended version of HPCW that has been installed and tested on some of the largest high performance computing systems in Europe. The work will be continued in the third phase of the centre of excellence, ESiWACE3.

ESiWACE2 stands for Centre of Excellence in Simulation of Weather and Climate in Europe Phase 2. ESiWACE2 is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (H2020-INFRAEDI-2018-1 call) under grant agreement 823988.