SCENARIO

POST fellowship at UK Parliament on carbon offsetting

The Social MetworkLeave a comment

Helen Hooker – h.hooker@pgr.reading.ac.uk

What is POST?

The Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST) is a research and knowledge exchange service at UK Parliament. POST uses the best available research evidence and information to inform the legislative process and scrutiny of Government. POST advisors and fellows create POSTnotes and POSTbriefs on hot topics of interest to MPs and peers (members of the House of Lords) that are published online. Members may use information from POST publications during committee meetings or debates in Parliament.

The POSTnote process

POST fellows work for three months on an assigned topic outside of their usual area of research. The research is rapid! Fellows quickly identify experts from Academia, NGOs, Industry, and Government departments to speak to, and try to think of insightful questions to ask.

I was assigned the topic of carbon offsetting – yay! I interviewed almost 40 people that varied from those working with Indigenous Peoples in Guyana to others working with farming communities on Biochar (the carbon rich remains of super-heated organic material) research in the UK.

What is carbon offsetting?

A carbon credit is a token representing the avoidance, reduction or removal of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG), measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). There are three main outcomes for projects creating carbon credits: Avoided emissions, for example by preventing deforestation and forest degradation; Reduced emissions, for example by restoring peatlands; and Removal and storage of CO2, for example by direct air capture or restoring forests. Businesses and individuals can purchase credits on the voluntary carbon market and may use them to offset their own emissions.

After lots of reading and reference gathering, the impartial POSTnote is drafted at around 3500 words and includes 100+ references. Internal and (a monster) external review follow (the draft note is sent to all contributors for comment) before final publication.

Working at Parliament

It was great to be a part of a team of POSTies, some seconded to select committees such as the Environmental Audit Committee or the Library. Others worked on different POSTnote topics like Green skills, AI in education and The future of fertiliser use. Westminster Palace is beautiful, awe-inspiring and a motivating place to work. There are lots of opportunities to enter ballots for activities and events. I was fortunate to attend the State Opening of Parliament (from the pavement, the King definitely waved at me), visit the archive tower (I counted nearly 300 steps up 12 floors and saw the original Freedom of Information Act 2000), and sing Christmas carols in Mr Speakers House.

Summary

I applied for a POST fellowship to learn more about policy and how research can have an impact. I loved the learning process, and I will use it in my research going forwards. I would like to thank SCENARIO DTP for funding the opportunity.

Tiger Teams: Using Machine Learning to Improve Urban Heat Wave Predictions

The Social MetworkLeave a comment

Adam Gainford – a.gainford@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Brian Lo – brian.lo@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Flynn Ames – f.ames@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Hannah Croad – h.croad@pgr.reading.ac.uk  

Ieuan Higgs  – i.higgs@pgr.reading.ac.uk

What is Tiger Teams?  

You may have heard the term Tiger Teams mentioned around the department by some PhD students, in a SCENARIO DTP weekly update email or even in the department’s pantomime. But what exactly is a tiger team? It is believed the term was coined in a 1964 Aerospace Reliability and Maintainability Conference paper to describe “a team of undomesticated and uninhibited technical specialists, selected for their experience, energy, and imagination, and assigned to track down relentlessly every possible source of failure in a spacecraft subsystem or simulation”.  

This sounds like a perfect team activity for a group of PhD students, although our project had less to do with hunting for flaws in spacecraft subsystems or simulations. Translating the original definition of a tiger team into the SCENARIO DTP activity, “Tiger Teams” is an opportunity for teams of PhD students to apply our skills to real-world challenges supplied by industrial partners.   

The project culminated in a visit to the Met Office to present our work.

Why did we sign up to Tiger Teams?  

In addition to a convincing pitch by our SCENARIO director, we thought that collaborating on a project in an unfamiliar area would be a great way to learn new skills from each other. The cross pollination of ideas and methods would not just be beneficial for our project, it may even help us with our individual PhD work.  

More generally, Tiger Teams was an opportunity to do something slightly different connected to research. Brainstorming ideas together for a specific real-life problem, maintaining a code repository as a group and giving team presentations were not the average experiences one could have as a PhD student. Even when, by chance, we get to collaborate with others, is it ever that different to our PhD? The sight of the same problems …. in the same area of work …everyday …. for months on end, can certainly get tiring. Dedicating one day per week on an unrelated, short-term project which will be completed within a few months helps to break the monotony of the mid-stage PhD blues. This is also much more indicative of how research is conducted in industry, where problems are solved collaboratively, and researchers with different talents are involved in multiple projects at once.

What did we do in this round’s Tiger Teams?  

One project was offered for this round of Tiger Teams: “Crowdsourced Data for Machine Learning Prediction of Urban Heat Wave Temperatures”. The bones of this project started during a machine learning hackathon at the Met Office and was later turned into a Tiger Teams proposal. Essentially, this project aimed to develop a machine learning model which would use amateur observations from the Met Offices Weather Observation Website (WOW), combined with landcover data, to fine-tune model outputs onto higher resolution grids.   

Having various backgrounds from environmental science, meteorology, physics and computer science, we were well equipped to carry out tasks formulated to predict urban heat wave temperatures. Some of the main components included:  

  • Quality control of data – as well as being more spatially dense, amateur observation stations are also more unreliable  
  • Feature selection – which inputs should we select to develop our ML models  
  • Error estimation and visualisation – How do we best assess and visualise the model performance  
  • Spatial predictions – Developing the tools to turn numerical weather prediction model outputs and high resolution landcover data into spatial temperature maps.  

Our supervisor for the project, Lewis Blunn, also provided many of the core ingredients to get this project to work, from retrieving and processing NWP data for our models, to developing a novel method for quantifying upstream land cover to be included in our machine learning models. 

An example of the spatial maps which our ML models can generate. Some key features of London are clearly visible, including the Thames and both Heathrow runways.

What were the deliverables?  

For most projects in industry, the team agrees with the customer (the industrial partner) on end-products to be produced before the conclusion of the project. Our two main deliverables were to (i) develop machine learning models that would predict urban heatwave temperatures across London and (ii) a presentation on our findings at the Met Office headquarters.  

By the end of the project, we had achieved both deliverables. Not only was our seminar at the Met Office attended by more than 120 staff, we also exchanged ideas with scientists from the Informatics Lab and briefly toured around the Met Office HQ and its operational centre. The models we developed as a team are in a shared Git repository, although we admit that we could still add a little more documentation for future development.  

As a bonus deliverable, our supervisor (and us) are consolidating our findings into a publishable paper. This is certainly a good deal considering our team effort in the past few months. Stay tuned for results from our paper perhaps in a future blog post!  

COP Climate Action Studio 2021 and a visit to the Green Zone, Glasgow  

Helen HookerLeave a comment

Helen Hooker h.hooker@pgr.reading.ac.uk 

Introduction 

SCENARIO DTP and the Walker Academy offered PhD students the opportunity to take part in the annual COP Climate Action Studio (COPCAS) 2021. COPCAS began with workshops on the background of COP, communication and interviewing skills and an understanding of the COP26 themes and the (massive!) schedule. James Fallon and Kerry Smith were ‘on the ground’ in the Blue Zone, Glasgow in week 1 of COP26, followed by Gwyn Matthews and Jo Herschan during week 2. Interviews were arranged between COP26 observers, and COPCAS participants back in Reading who were following COP26 events in small groups through livestream. Students summarised the varied and interesting findings by writing blog posts and engaging with social media.

Figure 1: COPCAS in action.   

Motivation, training and week 1 

Personally, I wanted to learn more about the COP process and to understand climate policy implementation and action (or lack thereof). I was also interested to learn more about anticipatory action and forecast based financing, which relate to my research. After spending 18 months working remotely in my kitchen, I wanted to meet other students and improve formulating and asking questions! I found the initial training reassuring in many ways, especially finding out that so many people have dedicated themselves to drive change and find solutions. During the first week of COP26 we heard about so many positive efforts to combat the climate crisis from personal actions to community schemes, and even country wide ambitious projects such as reforestation in Costa Rica. A momentum seemed to be building with pledges to stop deforestation and to reduce methane emissions.

Green Zone visit 

Figure 2: Green Zone visit included a weekend full of exhibitors, talks, films and panel discussions plus a giant inflatable extracting CO2 via bouncing!

During the middle weekend of COP26, some of us visited the Green Zone in Glasgow. This was a mini version of the Blue Zone open to the public and offered a wide variety of talks and panel discussions. Stand out moments for me: a photograph of indigenous children wearing bamboo raincoats, measuring the length of Judy Dench’s tree, the emotive youth speakers from Act4Food Act4Change and the climate research documentary Arctic Drift where hundreds of scientists onboard a ship carried out research whilst locked into the polar winter ice-flow.  

COPCAS Blog 

During COPCAS I wrote blogs about: a Green Zone event from Space4climate, an interview by Kerry Smith with SEAChange (a community-based project in Aberdeenshire aiming to decarbonise old stone buildings) and Sports for climate action. I also carried out an interview arranged by Jo with WWF on a food systems approach to tackling climate change.

Ultimately though, the elephant in the large COP26 Blue Zone room had been there all along…

Interview with Anne Olhoff, Emissions Gap Report (EGR) 2021 Chief scientific editor and Head of Strategy, Climate Planning and Policy, UNEP DTU Partnership.

Figure 3: Source: UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2021 updated midway through week two of COP26 accounting for new pledges. 

Time is running out, midway through the second week of COP26, the United Nations Environmental Partnership (UNEP) presented its assessment on the change to global temperature projections based on the updated pledges so far agreed in Glasgow.  

Pledges made prior to COP26 via Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) put the world on track to reach a temperature increase of 2.7C by the end of the century. To keep the Paris Agreement of keeping warming below 1.5C this century, global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 55% in the next eight years. At this point in COP26, updated pledges now account for just an 8% reduction – this is 7 times too small to keep to 1.5C and 4 times too small to keep to 2C. Updated projections based on COP26 so far now estimate a temperature rise of 2.4C by 2100. Net-zero pledges could reduce this by a further 0.5C, however plans are sketchy and not included in NDCs. So far just five of the G20 countries are on a pathway to net-zero.

Anne’s response regarding policy implementation in law: 

“Countries pledge targets for example for 2030 under the UN framework for climate change and there’s no international law to enforce them, at least not yet. Some countries have put net-zero policies into law, which has a much bigger impact as the government can be held accountable for the implementation of their pledges.” 

Following my own shock at the size of the emissions gap, I asked Anne if she feels there has been any positive changes in recent years: 

“I do think we have seen a lot of change, actually…the thing is, things are not moving as fast as they should. We have seen change in terms of the commitment of countries and the policy development and development in new technology needed to achieve the goals, these are all positive developments and here now, changing the whole narrative, just 2 years ago no one would have thought we’d have 70 countries setting net-zero emission targets…we are also seeing greater divergence between countries, between those making the effort to assist the green transition such as the UK, EU and others, and those further behind the curve such as China, Brazil and India. It’s important to help these countries transition very soon, peaking emissions and rapidly declining after that.”   

I asked Anne how countries on track can support others: 

“A lot of the great things here (at COP) is to strengthen that international collaboration and sharing of experiences, it’s an important function of the COP meeting, but we need to have the political will and leadership in the countries to drive this forward.” 

Summary 

The momentum that was apparent during the first week of COP26 seemed to have stalled with this update. Despite the monumental effort of so many scientists, NGOs, individuals and those seeking solutions from every conceivable angle, the pledges made on fossil fuel reduction are still so far from what is needed. And at the final hour (plus a day), the ambition to ‘phaseout’ burning coal was changed to ‘phasedown’ and the financial contributions from developed nations pledged to cover loss and damage to countries not responsible for, but impacted now by climate change, have not been realised. I think this is the first time I have really felt the true meaning of ‘climate justice’. Perhaps we do need a planet law, as it seems our political leaders, do not have the will.

Overall, the COPCAS experience has been enjoyable, slightly overwhelming and emotional! It has been great to work together and to share the experiences of those in the Blue zone. It was also an amazing learning experience; I think I have barely touched the surface of the entire COP process and I would still like to understand more.

Coding lessons for the newly initiated

Daniel AyersLeave a comment

Better coding skills and tooling enable faster, more useful results. 

Daniel Ayers – d.ayers@pgr.reading.ac.uk

This post presents a collection of resources and tips that have been most useful to me in the first 18 months I’ve been coding – when I arrived at Reading, my coding ability amounted to using excel formulas. These days, I spend a lot of time coding experiments that test how well machine learning algorithms can provide information on error growth in low-dimensional dynamical systems. This requires fairly heavy use of Scikit-learn, Tensorflow and Pandas. This post would have been optimally useful at the start of the year, but perhaps even the coding veterans will find something of use – or better, they can tell me about something I am yet to discover!  

First Steps: a few useful references 

  • A byte of python. A useful and concise reference for the fundamentals. 
  • Python Crash Course, Eric Matthes (2019). Detailed, lots of examples, and covers a wider range of topics (including, for example, using git). There are many intro to Python books around; this one has certainly been useful to me.1 There are many good online resources for python, but it can be helpful initially to have a coherent guide in one place. 

How did I do that last time…? 

Tip: save snippets. 

There are often small bits of code that contain key tricks that we use only occasionally. Sometimes it takes a bit of time reading forums or documentation to figure out these tricks. It’s a pain to have to do the legwork again to find the trick a second or third time. There were numerous occasions when I knew I’d worked out how to do something previously, and then spent precious minutes trawling through various bits of code and coursework to find the line where I’d done it. Then I found a better solution: I started saving snippets with an online note taking tool called Supernotes. Here’s an example:  

I often find myself searching through my code snippets to remind myself of things. 

Text editors, IDEs and plugins. 

If you haven’t already, it might be worth trying some different options when it comes to your text editor or IDE. I’ve met many people who swear by PyCharm. Personally, I’ve been getting on well with Visual Studio Code (VS Code) for a year now. 

Either way, I also recommend spending some time installing useful plugins as these can make your life easier. My recommendations for VS Code plugins are: Hungry Delete, Rainbow CSV, LaTeX Workshop, Bracket Pair Colorizer 2, Rewrap and Todo Tree. 

Linters & formatters 

Linters and formatters check your code for syntax errors or style errors. I use the Black formatter, and have it set to run every time I save my file. This seems to save a lot of time, and not only with formatting: it becomes more obvious when I have used incorrect syntax or made a typo. It also makes my code easier to read and look nicer. Here’s an example of Black in anger:  

Some other options for linters and formatters include autopep, yapf and pylint. 

Metadata for results 

Data needs metadata in order to be understood. Does your workflow enable you to understand your data? I tend to work with toy models, so my current approach is to make a new directory for each version of my experiment code. This way I can make notes for each version of the experiment (usually in a markdown file). In other words, what not to do, is to run the code to generate results and then edit the code (excepting, of course, if your code has a bug). At a later stage you may want to understand how your results were calculated, and this cannot be done if you’ve changed the code file since the data was generated (unless you are a git wizard). 

A bigger toolbox makes you a more powerful coder 

Knowing about the right tool for the job can make life much easier.2 There are many excellent Python packages, and the more you explore, the more likely you’ll know of something that can help you. A good resource for the modules of the Python 3 standard library is Python Module of The Week. Some favourite packages of mine are Pandas (for processing data) and Seaborn (a wrapper on Matplotlib that enables quick and fancy plotting of data). Both are well worth the time spent learning to use them. 

Some thoughts on Matplotlib 

Frankly some of the most frustrating experiences in my early days with python was trying to plot things with Matplotlib. At times it seemed inanely tedious, and bizarrely difficult to achieve what I wanted given how capable a tool others made it seem. My tips for the uninitiated would be: 

  • Be a minimalist, never a perfectionist. I often managed to spend 80% of my time plotting trying to achieve one obscure change. Ask: Do I really need this bit of the plot to get my point across? 
  • Can you hack it, i.e. can you fix up the plot using something other than Matplotlib? For example, you might spend ages trying to tell Matplotlib to get some spacing right, when for your current purpose you could get the same result by editing the plot in word/pages in a few clicks. 
  • Be patient. I promise, it gets easier with time. 

Object oriented programming 

I’m curious to know how many of us in the meteorology department code with classes. In simple projects, it is possible to do without classes. That said, there’s a reason classes are a fundamental of modern programming: they enable more elegant and effective problem solving, code structure and testing. As Hans Petter Langtangen states in A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python, “classes often provide better solutions to programming problems.”  

What’s more, if you understand classes and object- oriented programming concepts then understanding others’ code is much easier. For example, it can make Matplotlib’s documentation easier to understand and, in the worse caseworst case scenario, if you had to read the Matplotlib source code to understand what was going on under the hood, it will make much more sense if you know how classes work. As with Pandas, classes are worth the time buy in! 

Have any suggestions or other useful resources for wannabe pythonistas? Please comment below or email me at d.ayers@pgr.reading.ac.uk. 

Organising a virtual conference

gwynrmatthewsLeave a comment

Gwyneth Matthews – g.r.matthews@pgr.reading.ac.uk

A Doctoral Training Programme (DTP) provides funding, training, and opportunities for many PhD students in our department. Every year three environmentally focused DTPs: the SCENARIO NERC DTP, the London NERC DTP, and the Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet (SSCP) DTP, combine forces to hold a conference bringing together hundreds of PhD students to present their work and to network. As for many conferences in 2020, COVID19 disrupted our plans for the Joint DTP conference.  Usually the conference is hosted at one of the universities involved with a DTP however, this year it was held virtually using a mixture of Zoom and Slack. 

The decision to go virtual was difficult. We had to decide early in the pandemic when we didn’t know how long the lockdown would last nor what restrictions would be in place in September. If possible, we wanted to keep the conference in-person so that attendees got the full experience as it’s often the first time the new cohort meet and one of the few chances for the DTPs to mingle. However, as meeting and mingling was, and is, very much discouraged, making the decision to go virtual early on meant we had time to re-organise.  

Figure 1 – It was initially planned to hold the conference at the University of Surrey campus, which is located in Guildford, Surrey and hosts some students from the SCENARIO NERC DTP. The conference was instead held on Slack, an online communication platform that allows content to be divided into channels, and presentation sessions were hosted on Zoom.

When we thought we were organising a conference to be held at the University of Surrey, the main theme was “Engaging Sustainability” with the aim of making the conference as sustainable as possible. Since one of the often-made criticisms of conferences, especially those within the environmental fields, is the impact of large numbers of people travelling to one place, a virtual conference has obvious environmental benefits. An additional benefit was that we could invite guest speakers, such as Mya-Rose Craig (aka Bird Girl @birdgirluk), who may not have been able to attend if the event was held in person. It was also easier for some participants who had other commitments, such as childcare, to attend, although poor internet connection was an issue for others. 

The pandemic exposed, and often enhanced, many issues within academia and society in general. A questionnaire sent out before the event showed that most attendees were finding working from home and all other pandemic induced changes exhausting and mentally challenging. The recent Black Lives Matter protests around the world and the disproportionate impact of COVID on ethnic minority communities highlighted both the overt and systemic racism that is still prevalent in society. The UK Research and Innovation COVID funding controversy, and an increased focus on the challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ researchers emphasised the inequalities and poor representation specifically experienced in academia. Scientists working at the forefront of the pandemic response faced the challenge of providing clear information to enable people and policy makers to take life-disrupting actions before they are directly impacted; a challenge familiar to climate and environmental scientists. These issues gave us our topics for the external sessions which focused on wellbeing, inclusivity and diversity in academia, and communicating research.  

Barring technical difficulties, oral presentations are easy to replicate online, however, virtual conferences held earlier this year often had issues with recreating the poster sessions. Attempting to learn from these snags, instead of replicating an in-person poster session and possibly producing a poor-quality knock-off, participants were asked to create an animated “Twitter poster”. These were required to describe the key points of their research in a simple format that could be shared on social media and that was accessible to a non-expert. The posters were available for comments and questions throughout the two days in one easy-to-find location. Many of the participants shared their posters on Twitter after the conference using the conference hashtag #JointDTPCon.  

Another issue we faced was how to run a social and networking event. We kept the social event simple. A quiz. A pandemic classic with a fantastic double act as hosts. Randomly assigned teams meant that new connections could be made. However, the quiz was held online and after a full day of video calls most people didn’t want to spend their evenings also starring at a screen.  

Fig 2 – Jo Herschan and Lucinda King, members of the SCENARIO DTP and on the conference organising committee, hosted an entertaining quiz on the first night of the conference. An ethical objects photo round linked the quiz to the conference’s main theme.

With everyone having stayed at home and everything being conducted virtually for a few months by the time of our conference, Zoom fatigue was an issue we were aware could occur and tried to counter as much as possible during the day without losing any of the exciting new research being presented. In the weeks running up to the conference we had several discussions about how to encourage people to move throughout the two days without missing any of the sessions they wanted to attend. We decided on two ideas: a yoga session and a walking challenge. The yoga session was a success and not only gave participants an opportunity to stretch in the middle of the day but also linked strongly to our theme of researcher wellbeing. The walking challenge was not as successful. The aim was that collectively the conference participants would walk the distance from Land’s End to John O’Groats. We did not make it that far; but we did make it out of Cornwall. 

Fig 3 – Using World Walking to track the distance, we intended to collectively walk the 1576km (or 2,299,172 steps) from Land’s End to John O’Groats. This may have been an optimistic endeavour as we only achieved 235km (343, 311 steps).  

Helping to organise a virtual conference as part of an enthusiastic committee was a lot of fun and attending the conference and learning about the research being undertaken (from fungi in Kew Gardens to tigers in North Korea) was even more fun. There is still enormous room for improvement in virtual conferences, but since they aren’t as well established as traditional in-person conferences there’s also a lot of flexibility for each conference to be designed differently. Once we’re through the pandemic and in-person conferences return it’d be nice for some of these benefits to be maintained as hybrid conferences are designed.   

My journey to Reading: Going from application to newly minted SCENARIO PhD student

George GunnLeave a comment

George Gunn – g.f.gunn@pgr.reading.ac.uk 

Have you been thinking ‘I’ll never be good enough for a PhD’? Or perhaps you’ve been set on the idea of joining those who push the bounds of knowledge for quite some time, but are feeling daunted by the process? Well, keep reading. 

I started university with the hopes of stretching myself academically and gaining an undergraduate degree. As the degree progressed, I found myself increasingly improving in my marks and abilities. I enjoyed the coursework – researching a topic and the sense of discovery brought about by it. I became deeply interested in climate change and the impact humans have on the environment and was able to begin my dissertation research a year early because I was so motivated within my subject. 

In my final year of undergraduate studies, much of my time was pre-occupied with my role as Student President. Attending social events, board meetings, and lots of other things that didn’t involve a darkened room and a pile of books. I was very much a student who turned up, put the effort in, and then spent the rest of my time as I wished.  

Giving a speech at the Global Youth Strike for Climate, Inverness, as Student President. Extracurricular activities are a worthwhile addition to your application and were considered a lot during the interview! 

I began to look for opportunities for research degrees online, as well as asking almost anyone and everyone I knew academically if they had any ideas. Nothing came to fruition. That was until I received a Twitter notification from my lecturer drawing my attention to what looked to be an ideal PhD studentship. The snag? Applications were due to close within 3 hours of me checking the notification. 

By the time I had read the project particulars, accessed the cited literature and paced around my living room more than a few times, I had around 2 hours to submit an application. Due to my prior unsuccessful searches, I hadn’t previously submitted a PhD application and so had nothing to refer to – but proceed I did.  

Thankfully, the application was relatively straightforward. Standard job application information, details of the grades I had achieved and was predicted to achieve, and two academic references (for me, my personal academic tutor and climate change lecturer). What took time (I would advise anyone considering an application to prepare these earlier than I did!) was the statement of research interest and academic CV. My university careers service had excellent advice and resources to assist in that regard. 

Within minutes of the deadline, my application was in. I had almost forgotten about it by the time a week-or-so later I received an e-mail inviting me to Reading for an interview day. Shocked and excited were the emotions – little old me from the Highlands of Scotland, who hadn’t yet finished his undergraduate degree, was somehow being invited to one of the best Meteorology departments in the world to interview for a PhD studentship.  

No time to spare, my travel to and from Reading was booked. For the next couple of weeks, all I now had to worry about was how to do a PhD interview – though as will become clear, I need not have worried. I sought the advice of academic friends and colleagues (a calming influence for sure) and countless websites and forums (generally a source of unnecessary worry). 

Given the level of conflicting advice on PhD interviews, on arrival at Reading I wasn’t sure what to expect. At the front door I was provided with all the information that I needed for the day. I then made my way to a room with all the other candidates for a welcome talk and the opportunity to learn more about other projects on offer over lunch. 

The interview itself was very relaxed. No ‘stock’ PhD interview questions here – it was very much an opportunity to discuss my previous work and abilities, and how that might fit with the project. Importantly, it was an opportunity to meet my potential supervisors and ‘interview’ them too. If you’re going to spend 3-4 years working together, the connection needs to work well both ways. So, whilst the 30-minute interview slot seemed daunting on paper, the time flew by and it was soon time to leave. 

Fast forward a week or so and I was very surprised to receive an e-mail offering me the studentship that I had applied for: Developing an urban canopy model for improved weather forecasts in cities. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

At my desk in the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading. 

I hope that this blog post has helped you to feel less daunted to begin your PhD journey. Please feel free to get in touch with me by e-mail if you would like to chat further about beginning a PhD, or indeed to let me know how your own interview goes. Good luck! 

Life on Industrial Placement

Holly TurnerLeave a comment

Email: holly.turner@reading.ac.uk

I finished my PhD last year, and since the start of this year I’ve been doing something rather different. Courtesy of SCENARIO DTP funding, I am doing a 3-month post-doc placement with JBA Consulting in Skipton, North Yorkshire. After spending 3.5 years researching in an academic setting, it is great to be able to apply my knowledge to real-world problems.

Working in industry has a very different feel to working in academia. The science being done has an immediate purpose for the company, rather than being done purely to extend knowledge. In the case of my placement, the work that I am doing is ultimately to benefit the end users of the product.

The field that I am now working in is rather far removed from my PhD project: I have gone from gravity waves to surface water flooding. Whilst it has been quite a steep learning curve to bring myself up to speed with the current science in this area, it is great to branch out. I would urge anyone interested in doing an industrial placement not to be put off by going outside of your subject area. You might find something else that suits you better. It might even be the best step you ever make.

The choosing and setting up of the placement has all been fairly easy for me. SCENARIO had a range of placements available and I chose the one that most interested me. I had to send an application to the company, who then called me for an interview. Once they decided to offer me the placement, SCENARIO did the setting up with both JBA and the university. All I needed to worry about was finding accommodation for the 3 months.

To anyone considering doing an industrial placement: do it! I am currently 3 weeks in and have really enjoyed it so far. Everybody has been welcoming and helpful. I felt like part of the team by the end of my first day.

On relocating to Oklahoma for 3.5 months

Simon H. Lee1 Comment

Email: s.h.lee@pgr.reading.ac.uk

From May 4th through August 10th 2019, I relocated to Norman, Oklahoma, where I worked in the School of Meteorology in the National Weather Center (NWC) at the University of Oklahoma (OU). I’m co-supervised by Jason Furtado at OU, and part of my SCENARIO-funded project plan involves visiting OU each summer to work with Dr. Furtado’s research group, while using my time in the U.S. to visit relavant academics and conferences. Prior to my PhD, I studied Reading’s MMet Meteorology and Climate with a Year in Oklahoma degree, and spent 9 months at OU as part of that – so it’s a very familiar place! The two departments have a long-standing link, but this is the first time there has been PhD-supervision collaboration.

The National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma – home to the School of Meteorology.

The National Weather Center (NWC) [first conceived publicly in a 1999 speech by President Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the Bridge Creek-Moore tornado] opened in 2006 and is a vastly bigger building than Reading Meteorology! Alongside the School of Meteorology (SoM), it houses the Oklahoma Mesonet, the NOAA Storm Prediction Center (SPC) (who are responsible for operational severe weather and fire forecasting in the U.S.) and the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). SPC and NSSL will be familiar to any of you who have seen the 1996 film Twister. You could think of it as somewhat like a smaller version of the Reading Meteorology department being housed in the Met Office HQ in Exeter.

Inside the NWC.

The research done at SoM is mostly focussed on mesoscale dynamics, including tornadogenesis, thanks to its location right at the heart of ‘tornado alley’. It’s by no means a typical haunt of someone who researches stratosphere dynamics like I do, but SoM has broadened its focus in recent years with the inception of the Applied Climate Dynamics research group of which I’m a part. Aside from the numerous benefits of being able to speak face-to-face with a supervisor who is otherwise stuck on a TV screen on Skype, I also learnt new skills and new ways of thinking – purely from being at a different institution in a different country. I also used this time to work on the impact of the stratosphere on North America (a paper from this work is currently in review).

I also visited the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder, Colorado to present some of my work, and collaborate on some papers with scientists there. Boulder is an amazing place, and I highly recommend going and hiking up into the mountains if you can (see also this 2018 blog post from Jon Beverley on his visit to Boulder).

As for leisure… I chose to take 2 weeks holiday in late May to, let’s say, do “outdoor atmospheric exploration“. This happened to coincide with the peak of one of the most active tornado seasons in recent years, and I just so happened to see plenty of them. I’m still working on whether or not the stratosphere played a role in the weather patterns responsible for the outbreak!

An EF2-rated wedge tornado on 23 May near Canadian, Texas.