Communication

Royal Meteorology Conferences

Sally Woodhouse1 Comment

From 3rd-6th July 2018 the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) held two national conferences at the University of York. The Atmospheric Science Conference, joint with NCAS, started off the week and brought together scientists to present and discuss the latest research findings in weather, climate and atmospheric chemistry. The following two days brought the RMetS Student Conference. Both events were well attended by PhD students from Reading and provided a great opportunity to share our work with the wider scientific community.

For a summary of the work presented by Reading students, stick around until the end of the blog!

Atmospheric Science Conference 2018

Weather, Climate and Air Quality

Many of the presentations focused on seasonal forecasting with Adam Scaife (Met Office) giving a keynote address on “Skilful Long Range Forecasts for Europe”. He presented an interesting analysis on the current progress of predicting the North Atlantic Oscillation showing that there is skill in current predictions which could be improved even further by increasing ensemble size. Adam was also awarded the prestigious Copernicus Medal at the conference dinner. Another notable talk was by Reading’s own Ed Hawkins, who presented the benefits of using citizen scientists to rescue weather records. A summary of Ed’s presentation can be accessed below, and you can read more about research involving Citizen Science in Shannon Jones’ blog.

The poster sessions at the conference also gave a great opportunity to look at the breadth of work going on in institutions around the UK. It was also a great time to catch up with colleagues and forge new academic connections.

One of the highlights of the conference was having the conference dinner in the National Railway Museum. This was a fantastic yet surreal location with dining tables set up in the station hall overlooking a suite of old steam trains . The event was made even better by watching England‘s quarter-final world cup game!

conference_dinner

Evolution of Science: Past, Present and Future

Students & Early Career Scientist Conference

The student conference is open to all students with an interest in meteorology, from undergraduate to PhD and early career scientists. The conference aimed to give students the opportunity to meet each other and present their work at an early stage in their career before attending other academic conferences. For many of those attending from Reading this was their first time presenting research at an event outside of the department and provided a great experience to communicate their work with others. Work presented varied from radiative forcing to normal empirical modes (summaries of talks are below). There were also a number of keynote speakers and workshops aimed at addressing the current challenges in atmospheric sciences and skills that are important for researchers.

student_workshop_1
Rory Fitzpatrick, presenting on skills for writing as an academic. “I have the Best Words” – How to write articles that impact bigly”

Of course there was also time for socialising with an ice-breaker dinner and pub quiz  and a formal Conference dinner on the Thursday. This was the second student conference I have attended and it was a really great place to discuss my work and meet other students from around the country. I have also attended other academic events with several people that I met at the conference last year, it’s always great to see a friendly face!

The student conference is organised by a committee of students from around the UK. Being on the committee was a great opportunity to learn more about how conferences work and to practice skills such as chairing sessions. It has also been great to get to know lots of different people working within meteorology. If you’re interested in helping organise next year’s conference please do get in touch with Victoria Dickinson at RMetS (Victoria.Dickinson@rmets.org) or if you’re thinking about attending then you can start by joining the society where you’ll hear about all the other great events they host.

Highlights of the work presented by Reading students:

Godwin Ayesiga presented work on the convective activity that connects Western and Eastern equatorial Africa. Investigating how intraseasonal modes of variability influence intense rainfall.

Matt Priestley presented an assessment of the importance of windstorm clustering on European wintertime insurance losses. More details of this work can be found here.

Lewis Blunn presented his work looking into the ‘grey zone’ of turbulence at model grid scale lengths of 100 m – 1 km. At these scales turbulence is partially resolved by the grid but still needs to be partially parameterised. Lewis finds that spurious grid scale features emerge at scales where turbulence is partially resolved. Model results are poorer in this ‘grey zone’ than when turbulence is fully resolved or fully parameterised.

Alec Vessey presented his work evaluating the representation of Arctic storms in different reanalysis products. He found that there is a difference between different reanlysis and so care should be taken when using these products to analyse Arctic storms.

Dominic Jones presented a technique for extracting modes of variability from atmospheric data, and a test dataset that has been developed to use this technique to examine the relationship of modes of variability associated with the jet-latitude.

Rachael Byrom presented a motivation for quantifying methane’s shortwave radiative forcing. Her work demonstrated a need to use a high resolution narrow-band radiation model to accurately calculate forcings in atmospheric models.

Andrea Marcheggiani presented a poster on the role of resolution in predicting the North Atlantic storm track. An energy budget of the winter climatology (DJF 1979-2018) was presented.

Sally Woodhouse presented her work on the impact of resolution on energy transports into the Arctic. She has found that increasing atmospheric resolution increases the energy transport in the ocean to better agree with observations.

Kaja Milczewska presented work on evaluating the inaccuracies of predicting air quality in the UK.

Having recently passed her viva, Caroline Dunning’s presentation was on precipitation seasonality over Africa under present and future climates. Caroline has developed a new methodology for determining the beginning and end of the wet season across Africa. This has been applied to CMIP5 model output to look at future changes in wet seasons across Africa under climate change.

Presenting in Ponte Vedra, Florida – 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology

The Social MetworkLeave a comment

Email: j.f.talib@pgr.reading.ac.uk

You’ve watched many speak before you. You’ve practised your presentation repeatedly. You’ve spent hours, days, months, and sometimes years, understanding your scientific work. Yet, no matter the audience’s size or specialism, the nerves always creep in before a presentation. It’s especially no different at your first international conference!

IMG_20180420_133234

Between the 16th and 20th April 2018, me, Jonathan Beverley and Bethan Harris were fortunate enough to attend and present at the American Meteorological Society 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in Ponte Vedra, Florida. For each of us, our first international conference!

Being a regular user of Instagram through the conference, especially the Instagram Story function, I was regularly asked by my friends back home, “what actually happens at a scientific conference”? Very simple really – scientists from around the world, from different departments, universities, and countries, come to share their work, in the hope of progressing the scientific field, to learn from one another, and network with future collaborators. For myself, it was an opportunity to present recently submitted work and to discuss with fellow researchers on the important questions that should be asked during the rest of my PhD. One outcome of my talk for example, was a two-hour discussion with a graduate student from Caltech, which not only improved my own work, but also helped me understand other research in global circulation.

Recordings of the presentations given by University of Reading PhD students can be found at:

Alongside presenting my own work, I had the opportunity to listen and learn from other scientific researchers. The conference had oral and poster presentations from a variety of tropical meteorology subject areas including hurricanes, global circulation, sub-seasonal forecasting, monsoons and Madden-Julian Oscillation. One of the things that I most enjoy at conferences is to hear from leading academics give an overview of certain topic or issue. For example, Kerry Emanuel spoke on the inferences that can be made from simple models of tropical convection. Through applying four key principles of tropical meteorology including the weak temperature gradient approximation and conservation of free-tropospheric moist static energy, we can understand tropical meteorology processes including the Intertropical Convergence Zone, Walker circulation and observed temperature and humidity profiles.

Of course, if you’re going to fly to the other side of the pond, you must take advantage of being in the USA. We saw a SPACEX rocket launch, (just at a distance of 150 miles away,) experienced travelling through a squall line, visited the launch sites of NASA’s first space programs, and explored the sunny streets of Miami. It was a great privilege to have the opportunity to present and attend the AMS 33rd Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, and I am hugely thankful to NERC SCENARIO DTP and the Department of Meteorology for funding my work and travel.

 

Describe your research using the ten-hundred most common words…

Rebecca Couchman-Crook1 Comment

Online comic “xkcd” set a trend for explaining complicated things using only the 1000 most common words when they created this schematic of Saturn-V.  They have subsequently published more on how microwaves, plate tectonics and your computer work, using the same style.

tornado safety
Useful safety advice from xkcd

So we thought we’d jump on the bandwagon in a recent PhD group meeting, and have a go at explaining our research topics using the ten-hundred most common words. You can have a go yourselves, and tweet us with it @SocialMetwork on Twitter. Enjoy!

The Role of the Asian Summer Monsoon in European Summer Climate Variability – Jonathan Beverley

I look at how heavy rain in in-dear in summer makes rain, sun, wind and other things happen in your-up. This happens by big waves high up in the sky moving around the world. We might be able to use this to make a long know-before better and to help people live longer and not lose money.

Contribution of near-infrared bands of greenhouse gases to radiative forcing – Rachael Byrom

I study how the sun’s light warms the sky. This happens when these really tiny things in the air that we can’t see eat the sun’s light which then makes the sky warmer. I use computers to look into how this happens, especially how exactly the really tiny things eat the sun’s light and how this leads to warming. By this I mean, if I add lots of the tiny things to a pretend computer sky, all over the world, then will the sky also warm over all of the world too and by how much will it warm? This might be interesting for people who lead the world so that they can see how much of the really tiny things we should be allowed to put into the sky.

Wind profile effects on gravity wave drag and their impact on the global atmospheric circulation – Holly Turner

I look at waves in the air over high places and how they slow down the wind. When the wind gets faster the higher up you go, it changes how it slows down. I want to use this to make computer wind pictures better.

The pulsatory nature of Bagana volcano, Papua New Guinea – Rebecca Couchman-Crook

To be a doctor, I look at a fire-breathing ground thing with smoke and rocks on a hot place surrounded by water. I look at space pictures to understand the relationships between the air that smells and fire-rock bits in the air, and other stuff. It’s a very angry fire-breathing ground thing and might kill the near-by humans

Surface fluxes, temperatures and boundary layer evolutions in the building grey zone in London – Beth Saunders

I work on numbers which come out of the Met Office’s computer world. These numbers are different to what is seen and felt in real life for cities. True numbers, seen in real life, help to say how hot cities are, and how different the hot city is to areas that aren’t cities, with trees and fields, because of the city’s people, cars and houses. Numbers saying how fast the wind goes, and the wind’s direction, change in cities because of all the areas with tall houses. Finding times where the computer world numbers are bad for cities will help to make the Met Office’s computer give numbers more like the true numbers.

Cloud electrification and lightning in the evolution of convective storms – Ben Courtier

To be a doctor, I look at sudden light shocks from angry water air that happens with noise in the sky and how the angry water air changes before the light shock happens. I do this in order to better guess when the sudden light shock happens.

 

Inspirational Female Scientists #women1918

The Social MetworkLeave a comment

100 years ago today the UK parliament reformed the electoral system in Great Britain by permitting women over the age of 30 to vote. Unfortunately, there were terms to the act that meant women either had to be a member or married to a member of the Local Government Register, a property owner, or a graduate voting in a University constituency. However, crucial and progressive steps had been taken for women’s rights, and it is the same for today as it was 100 years ago, that more is needed to be done to ensure global gender equality.

At Social Metwork HQ, we have taken our time to reflect and be encouraged by inspirational female scientists. Different students across the department have written short paragraphs on female scientists that have inspired them to where they are today. If you have any other suggestions for inspirational scientists, please feel free to leave us a comment.

Amelie Emmy Noether – Kaja Milczewska

emmy-noether-2A true revolutionary in the field of theoretical physics and abstract algebra, Amelie Emmy Noether was a German-born inspiration thanks to her perseverance and passion for research. Instead of teaching French and English to schoolgirls, Emmy pursued the study of mathematics at the University of Erlangen. She then taught under a man’s name and without pay because she was a women.  During her exploration of the mathematics behind Einstein’s general relativity alongside renowned scientists like Hilbert and Klein, she discovered the fundamentals of conserved quantities such as energy and momentum under symmetric invariance of their respective quantities: time and homogeneity of space. She built the bridge between conservation and symmetry in nature, and although Noether’s Theorem is fundamental to our understanding of nature’s conservation laws, Emmy has received undeservedly small recognition throughout the last century.

Claudine Hermann – Helene Bresson

Claudine-HermannClaudine Hermann is a French physicist and Emeritus Professor at the École Polytechnique in Paris. Her work, on physics of solids (mainly on photo-emission of polarized electrons and near-field optics), led to her becoming the first female professor at this prestigious school. Aside from her work in Physics, Claudine studied and wrote about female scientists’ situation in Europe and the influence of both parents’ works on their daughter’s professional choices. Claudine wishes to give girls “other examples than the unreachable Marie Curie”. She is the founder of the Women and Sciences association and represented it at the European Commission to promote gender equality in Science and to help women accessing scientific knowledge. Claudine is also the president of the European Platform of Women Scientists which represents hundreds of associations and more than 12,000 female scientists.

Katherine Johnson – Sally Woodhouse

26646856911_ca242812ee_o_1For most people being handpicked to be one of three students to integrate West Virginia’s graduate schools would probably be the most notable life achievements. However for Katherine Johnson’s this was just the start of a remarkable list of accomplishments. In 1952 Johnson joined the all-black West Area Computing section at NACA (to become NASA in 1958). Acting as a computer, Johnson analysed flight test data, provided maths for engineering lectures and worked on the trajectory for America’s first human space flight.

She became the first woman to receive an author credit on a Flight Research Division report in 1960 and went on to author or co-author 26 research reports. Johnson is perhaps best known (in part due to the excellent feel good film Hidden Figures) for her work on the flight trajectory for John Glenn’s 1962 orbital mission.

katherine_johnson_obama

She was required to check the calculations of NASA’s IBM computer and Glenn is reported to have asked for her to personally check the coordinates.

“GET THE GIRL TO CHECK THE NUMBERS… IF SHE SAYS THE NUMBERS ARE GOOD, I’M READY TO GO.”

Katherine was also involved in calculations for the Apollo missions trajectories, including Apollo 11. In 2015 she was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama.

Marie Tharp – Caroline Dunning

World War II was an important period in terms of scientific advance. In addition, it enabled more women to be trained in professions such as geology, at a time when very few women were in earth sciences. One such woman was Marie Tharp. Following the advancement of sonar technology during WWII, in the early 1950s, ships travelled across the Atlantic Ocean recording ocean depth. maria-tharp-oceanWomen however were not allowed on such ships, thus Marie Tharp was stationed in the lab, checking and plotting the data. Her drawings showed the presence of the North Atlantic Ridge, with a deep V-shaped notch that ran the length of the mountain range, indicating the presence of a rift valley, where magma emerges to form new crust. At this time the theory of plate tectonics was seen as ridiculous. Her supervisor initially dismissed her results as ‘girl talk’ and forced her to redo them. The same results were found. Her work led to the acceptance of the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Ada Lovelace – Dominic Jones

ada-lovelace-20825279-1-402Ada Lovelace was a 19th century Mathematician popularly referred to as the “first computer programmer”. She was the translator of “Sketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes from the Translator”, (said “notes” tripling the length of the document and comprising its most striking insights) one of the documents critical to the development of modern computer programming. She was one of the few people to understand and even fewer who were able to develop for the machine. That she had such incredible insight into a machine which didn’t even exist yet, but which would go on to become so ubiquitous is amazing!

Drs. Jenni Evans, Sukyoung Lee, and Yvette Richardson – Michael Johnston

Leading Scientists at Penn State University, Drs. Jenni Evans, Sukyoung Lee, and Yvette Richardson serve as role models for students in STEM subjects. The three professors are active in linking their research interests to not only education but also science communication, and government policy. Between them, they highlight some of the many avenues a career in STEM can lead to. Whether its authoring a widely used textbook, leading advisory panels, or challenging students throughout their time in higher education – these leaders never cease to be an inspiration.

 

A week at COP23

Sally WoodhouseLeave a comment

From the 6th -17th of November the UNFCCC’s (United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change) annual meeting or “Conference of the Parties” – COP took place. This year was COP23 and was hosted by Bonn in the UN’s world conference centre with Fiji taking the presidency.

IMG_20171106_123155780

Heading into the Bonn Zone on the first day of the COP. The Bonn Zone was the part of the conference for NGO stands and side events.

As part of the Walker Institutes Climate Action Studio another SCENARIO PhD and I attended the first week of the COP while students back in Reading participated remotely via the UNFCCC’s YouTube channel and through interviews with other participants of the COP.

There are many different components to the COP, it is primarily the meeting of a number of different international Climate agreements with lots of work currently being done on the implementation on the Paris Agreement. However it is also a space where many different civil society groups doing work connected to or impacted by climate change come together, to make connections with other NGOs as well as governments. This is done in an official capacity within the “exhibition zone” of the conference and with a vast array of side events taking place throughout the two weeks. Outside of these official events there are also many demonstrations both inside and outside of the conference space.

Demonstrations in the Bonn Zone

As an observer I was able to watch some of the official negotiations. On the Wednesday I attended the SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) informal consultation on research and systematic observations. It was an illuminating experience to see the negotiation process in action. At times it was frustrating to see how picky it feels like the negotiation teams can be, however over the week I did have a newfound appreciation for the complexity of the issues that are having to be resolved. This meeting was based on writing a short summary of the IPCC report and other scientific reports used by the COP, and so was less politically charged than a lot of the other meetings. However this didn’t stop an unexpected amount of debate over whether to include examples such as carbon-dioxide concentrations.

One of the most useful ways to learn about the COP was by talking to the different people and groups who we met at COP. It was interesting to see the different angles with which people were approaching the COP. From researchers who were observing the political process, to environmental and human rights NGO’s trying to get governments to engage with issues that they’re working on.

Interviewing other COP participants at the Walker Institutes stand

A particular highlight was the ex-leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett, she spoke with us and the students back in Reading about a wide range of topics, from women’s involvement in the climate movement to discussing my PhD.

Kelly Stone from Action Aid provided a great insight into how charities operate at the COP. She spoke of making connections with other charities, often there are areas of overlap between their work but on other issues they had diverging opinions. However these differences have to be put aside to make progress on their shared interests. Kelly also discussed how it always amazes her that people are surprised that everyone who attends COP does not agree on everything, “we’re not deciding if climate change is real”. The issues being dealt with at the COP are complex dealing with human rights, economics, technology as well as climate change. Often serious compromises have to be made and this must be done by reaching a consensus between all 197 Parties to the UNFCCC.

To read more about the student experience of COP and summaries of specific talks and interviews you can view the COP CAS blog here. You can also read about last years COP on this blog here.

Clockwise from top left: The opening on the evening of Monday 6th November showed Fiji leaving its own mark as the President of the conference. The Norwegian Pavilion had a real Scandi feel, while the Fiji Pavilion transported visitors to a tropical island.

 

New Forecast Model Provides First Global Scale Seasonal River Flow Forecasts

Rebecca Emerton2 Comments

new_web_figure2_rivernetwork

Over the past ~decade, extended-range forecasts of river flow have begun to emerge around the globe, combining meteorological forecasts with hydrological models to provide seasonal hydro-meteorological outlooks. Seasonal forecasts of river flow could be useful in providing early indications of potential floods and droughts; information that could be of benefit for disaster risk reduction, resilience and humanitarian aid, alongside applications in agriculture and water resource management.

While seasonal river flow forecasting systems exist for some regions around the world, such as the U.S., Australia, Africa and Europe, the forecasts are not always accessible, and forecasts in other regions and at the global scale are few and far between.  In order to gain a global overview of the upcoming hydrological situation, other information tends to be used – for example historical probabilities based on past conditions, or seasonal forecasts of precipitation. However, precipitation forecasts may not be the best indicator of floodiness, as the link between precipitation and floodiness is non-linear. A recent paper by Coughlan-de-Perez et al (2017), “should seasonal rainfall forecasts be used for flood preparedness?”, states:

“Ultimately, the most informative forecasts of flood hazard at the seasonal scale are streamflow forecasts using hydrological models calibrated for individual river basins. While this is more computationally and resource intensive, better forecasts of seasonal flood risk could be of immense use to the disaster preparedness community.”

twitter_screenshotOver the past months, researchers in the Water@Reading* research group have been working with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), to set up a new global scale hydro-meteorological seasonal forecasting system. Last week, on 10th November 2017, the new forecasting system was officially launched as an addition to the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS). GloFAS is co-developed by ECMWF and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), as part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Services, and provides flood forecasts for the entire globe up to 30 days in advance. Now, GloFAS also provides seasonal river flow outlooks for the global river network, out to 4 months ahead – meaning that for the first time, operational seasonal river flow forecasts exist at the global scale – providing globally consistent forecasts, and forecasts for countries and regions where no other forecasts are available.

The new seasonal outlook is produced by forcing the Lisflood hydrological river routing model with surface and sub-surface runoff from SEAS5, the latest version of ECMWF’s seasonal forecasting system, (also launched last week), which consists of 51 ensemble members at ~35km horizontal resolution. Lisflood simulates the groundwater and routing processes, producing a probabilistic forecast of river flow at 0.1o horizontal resolution (~10km, the resolution of Lisflood) out to four months, initialised using the latest ERA-5 model reanalysis.

The seasonal outlook is displayed as three new layers in the GloFAS web interface, which is publicly (and freely) available at www.globalfloods.eu. The first of these gives a global overview of the maximum probability of unusually high or low river flow (defined as flow exceeding the 80th or falling below the 20th percentile of the model climatology), during the 4-month forecast horizon, in each of the 306 major world river basins used in GloFAS-Seasonal.

new_web_figure1_basins
The new GloFAS Seasonal Outlook Basin Overview and River Network Layers.

The second layer provides further sub-basin-scale detail, by displaying the global river network (all pixels with an upstream area >1500km2), again coloured according to the maximum probability of unusually high or low river flow during the 4-month forecast horizon. In the third layer, reporting points with global coverage are displayed, where more forecast information is available. At these points, an ensemble hydrograph is provided showing the 4-month forecast of river flow, with thresholds for comparison of the forecast to typical or extreme conditions based on the model climatology. Also displayed is a persistence diagram showing the weekly probability of exceedance for the current and previous three forecasts.

blog_screenshot
The new GloFAS Seasonal Outlook showing the river network and reporting points providing hydrographs and persistence diagrams.

Over the coming months, an evaluation of the system will be completed – for now, users are advised to evaluate the forecasts for their particular application. We welcome any feedback on the forecast visualisations and skill – feel free to contact me at the email address below!

To find out more, you can see the University’s press release here, further information on SEAS5 here, and the user information on the seasonal outlook GloFAS layers here.

*Water@Reading is “a vibrant cross-faculty centre of research excellence at the University of Reading, delivering world class knowledge in water science, policy and societal impacts for the UK and internationally.”

Full list of collaborators: 

Rebecca Emerton1,2, Ervin Zsoter1,2, Louise Arnal1,2, Prof. Hannah Cloke1, Dr. Liz Stephens1, Dr. Florian Pappenberger2, Prof. Christel Prudhomme2, Dr Peter Salamon3, Davide Muraro3, Gabriele Mantovani3

1 University of Reading
2 ECMWF
3 European Commission JRC

Contact: r.e.emerton@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Adventures in Modelling – NCAS Climate Modelling Summer School

Sally WoodhouseLeave a comment

At the beginning of September 3 PhD students from Reading, including myself, went to Cambridge to attend the NCAS Climate Modelling Summer School. This is an annual event aimed at PhD students and early career scientists who want to develop their understanding of climate models, with topics covering parameterisations to supercomputers.

IMG_3847
Staff and students of the course pose outside the Chemistry department, which played host to morning lectures

The course ran over two weeks with lectures on the components of climate models in the morning, covering fundamental dynamics and thermodynamics, numerical methods and different parameterisations. This was followed by an afternoon of computer practicals and then more topical lectures in the evening, such as “User engagement in climate science” and “The Sun and Earth’s climate system”. The lectures were very fast paced but this was a great opportunity to cover so many topics in a short space of time and get a grounding in lots of different topics that I will definitely be looking over in future. A poster session on the second evening gave us the chance to learn about other people’s work and make connections with other people starting out their careers in climate science, including a few readers of the blog, that will hopefully last throughout our careers.

One of the highlights of the course was the chance to run some (rather interesting) experiments with an earth system model. This involved breaking into groups with each being given a different project. It was exciting to go  through the whole process of having an idea, developing a hypothesis, thinking of specific experiments to answer the hypothesis and then analysing the results in just a week – something that takes much longer when you’re doing a PhD! My group worked on the Flat Earth experiment, which looked at the effect of removing all of the earth’s orography not, to our dismay, turning the earth into a flat disk. I learned a lot about how to run models, something which I have never done even though I use the output. It also developed my understanding of different climate processes that I don’t work with such as the monsoons, and even dynamical vegetation.

monsoons
Flat earth experiment looking at the change in the monsoon winds

Throughout the course we stayed at St Catharine’s College. Right in the centre of Cambridge it quickly felt like a home from home, keeping us well fed to get through the intense science. Although the weekend was rainy, apparently breaking a run of excellent weather for the school, we still had plenty of time to explore beautiful Cambridge. A few people were even brave enough to go punting!

An interesting, hectic and inspiring two weeks later we may have been glad to head back to Reading for a good sleep but having thoroughly enjoyed the summer school.

Buildings2000-®TimRawle-resized-w680px
The beautiful St Catharine’s College, image from http://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/

 

RMetS Impact of Science Conference 2017.

The Social Metwork1 Comment

Email – j.f.talib@pgr.reading.ac.uk

“We aim to help people make better decisions than they would if we weren’t here”

Rob Varley CEO of Met Office

This week PhD students from the University of Reading attended the Royal Meteorological Society Impact of Science Conference for Students and Early Career Scientists. Approximately eighty scientists from across the UK and beyond gathered at the UK Met Office to learn new science, share their own work, and develop new communication skills.

image4

Across the two days students presented their work in either a poster or oral format. Jonathan Beverley, Lewis Blunn and I presented posters on our work, whilst Kaja Milczewska, Adam Bateson, Bethan Harris, Armenia Franco-Diaz and Sally Woodhouse gave oral presentations. Honourable mentions for their presentations were given to Bethan Harris and Sally Woodhouse who presented work on the energetics of atmospheric water vapour diffusion and the representation of mass transport over the Arctic in climate models (respectively). Both were invited to write an article for RMetS Weather Magazine (watch this space). Congratulations also to Jonathan Beverley for winning the conference’s photo competition!

IMG_3055
Jonathan Beverley’s Winning Photo.

Alongside student presentations, two keynote speaker sessions took place, with the latter of these sessions titled Science Communication: Lessons from the past, learning for future impact. Speakers in this session included Prof. Ellie Highwood (Professor of Climate Physics and Dean for Diversity and Inclusion at University of Reading), Chris Huhne (Co-chair of ET-index and former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change), Leo Hickman (editor for Carbon Brief) and Dr Amanda Maycock (NERC Independent Research Fellow and Associate Professor in Climate Dynamics, University of Leeds). Having a diverse range of speakers encouraged thought-provoking discussion and raised issues in science communication from many angles.

Prof. Ellie Highwood opened the session challenging us all to step beyond the typical methods of scientific communication. Try presenting your science without plots. Try presenting your work with no slides at all! You could step beyond the boundaries even more by creating interesting props (for example, the notorious climate change blanket). Next up Chris Huhne and Leo Hickman gave an overview of the political and media interactions with climate change science (respectively). The Brexit referendum, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord and the rise of the phrase “fake news” are some of the issues in a society “where trust in the experts is falling”. Finally, Dr Amanda Maycock presented a broad overview of influential science communicators from the past few centuries. Is science relying too heavily on celebrities for successful communication? Should the research community put more effort into scientific outreach?

Communication and collaboration became the two overarching themes of the conference, and conferences such as this one are a valuable way to develop these skills. Thank you to the Royal Meteorology Society and UK Met Office for hosting the conference and good luck to all the young scientists that we met over the two days.

#RMetSImpact

DEkAxGgXkAAmaWE.jpg large

Also thank you to NCAS for funding my conference registration and to all those who provided photos for this post.