Email: h.v.turner@pgr.reading.ac.uk
All photos courtesy of Carlo Cafaro
On 22nd and 23rd February, a group of students from the University of Reading visited the UK Met Office in Exeter to share our work and listen to talks from academics and Met Office employees. It was a great opportunity to discuss our work with other scientists from outside the university.
We arrived at the Met Office at 12 on the Wednesday. Once we had hung up our posters and had lunch, we listened to our first talk from Dale Barker, who is Deputy Director of Weather Science at the UK Met Office. He gave us an overview of the Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP) and the variety of work that takes place within the partnership. The MOAP brings together the UK Met Office with the universities of Exeter, Reading, Leeds, and Oxford to collaborate on projects and share science. It aims to pull together world-class expertise in weather and climate science to tackle key problems in these areas, and to provide an environment to develop the science leaders of tomorrow. The next talk was from Prof. Nadine Unger from the University of Exeter who spoke about aerosol pollution and work she has been involved in with African nations to reduce health problems caused by pollution. Our very own Dr Clare Watt then spoke about space weather, focusing on the magnetosphere and the impact of ‘killer’ electrons. The final talk of the day was from Dr Steven Böing from the University of Leeds. He spoke about semi-Lagrangian cloud modelling and how it can be used to increase forecast accuracy.
The poster session then took place in the Street. A lot of useful discussions were had during this session (and over the whole two days) as we were able to share our work with each other and also with passing members of Met Office staff. I certainly realized some new things about my results and had ideas about future directions for my work.
On the second day we had a presentation on career opportunities within the scientific areas of the Met Office from Mo Mylne, who is Science Project and Planning Manager at the UK Met Office. This really highlighted the breadth of roles that are available at the national meteorological service. This was followed by a talk from Prof. Coralia Cartis from the University of Oxford who spoke about parameter estimation for climate modelling using optimization techniques. After this, we were taken on tours of the Met Office to see some of areas that scientists are involved in. We then had lunch and a final opportunity to discuss our posters before the event finished.
Overall, then, it was a very enjoyable event with a great variety of subjects covered by the talks. I found the use of optimization techniques for parameter estimation particularly interesting and I hope to incorporate some of the ideas into my own research. I feel I have personally learned a lot, both about my own results and new ideas to consider. Thank you to all at the Met Office who organized the event.
The Social Metwork 