Summer School

NCAS Climate Modelling Summer School

Shammi AkhterLeave a comment

Shammi Akhter – s.akhter@pgr.reading.ac.uk

The Virtual Climate Modelling Summer School covers the fundamental principles of climate modelling. The school is run for 2 weeks in the September of each year by the leading researchers from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. I attended the school mainly because I have recently started using climate models in the second aspect of my research work and also because one of my supervisors recommended this to me.

What happened during the first week?

In the first week, lecturers introduced us to numerical methods used in climate models and we had a practical assignment implementing a chosen numerical method of our own in Python. We mostly worked individually on our projects that week. There were also lectures on convection parameterisation and statistical analysis for climate models.

What happened during the second week?

Figure 1: Earth energy budget comparison diagram between control (red) and flat earth (green) experiments produced by me in week 2.

In week two, with the assistance of NCAS and university scientists, we analysed climate model outputs. I personally was involved in the Flat Earth experiment- in which we tested the effect of changing surface elevation for terrain such as mountains, high plateaus on the climate. In this experiment, the perturbation is imposed by reducing the elevation of mountains to sea level. There were eight people in our team. As you may know, we PhD students have the occasional opportunity to do research collaboratively with other students in Reading Meteorology and encourage our teammates. For this reason, it felt very nice to me to work as the part of a research group. I was amazed by how we had been able to produce a small good piece of scientific work just within a matter of days due to our team effort. In Figure 1, I have presented a small part of our work which is the global energy budget comparison between a control experiment and the flat earth experiment (where the elevation of the mountains has been reduced to sea level). Along with our practical, we also attended some lectures on the ocean dynamics and physics, water in the climate system and land-atmosphere coupling and surface energy balance during this week.

How was it like to socialize with people virtually?

We used the Gather.town during the lunchtime and after work to socialize. I was a bit surprised though that I was the only student joining the Gather.town and as a result I always had to hang out (virtually) with NCAS and university scientists all the time. I rather consider it a blessing for me as there was no competition to introduce myself to the professionals. I even received a kind offer from one of our professors to assist him as a teaching assistant in his course in the department.

Concluding Remarks

I learnt about some of the basic concepts of climate modelling and I hope to use these things in my research someday. It was also very refreshing to talk to and work with other students as well as the scientists. While working in a group in week 2, I once again realized there are so many things we can accomplish if we work together and encourage each other.

Fluid Dynamics Summer School 

Charlie SuittersLeave a comment

Charlie Suitters – c.c.suitters@pgr.reading.ac.uk 

Every year, Cambridge and École Polytechnique in Paris alternate hosting duties of the Fluid Dynamics of Sustainability and the Environment (FDSE) summer school. This ran for two weeks earlier in September, and like many other things took place online. After talking to previous attendees of the summer school, I went into the fortnight with excitement but also trepidation, as I had heard that it has an intense programme! Here is my experience of a thoroughly enjoyable couple of weeks. 

Structure 

The summer school brought together around 50 PhD students and a few postdocs from all over the world, from Japan to Europe to Arizona, and I have to admire the determination of those students who attended the school at unsociable times of the day! We all came from different backgrounds – some had a meteorological background like myself, but there were also oceanographers, fluid dynamicists, engineers and geographers to name but a few. It was great to hear from so many students who are passionate about their work in two brief ice-breaker sessions where we introduced ourselves to the group and I got to appreciate how wide-reaching the FDSE community is. 

Each day consisted of four 1-hour lectures – normally three ‘core’ subjects (fluid dynamics basics, atmospheric dynamics, climate, oceanography, etc.) and one guest lecturer per day (including our very own Sue Gray who gave us a whistle-stop tour of the mesoscale and extratropical cyclones). After this, there was the opportunity to split into breakout groups and speak to the day’s lecturers to ask them questions and spark discussions in small groups. On the final day, we also had a virtual tour of the various fluid dynamics labs that Cambridge has (there are a lot!) and a few of the students in the labs spoke about their work. 

Core Lectures 

Figure 1. Demonstration of a density current (blue) of salty water in a tank of less dense tap water. Taken from Jean-Marc Chomaz’s lecture

These lectures were given by very engaging specialists including Colm-Cille Caulfield, John Taylor, Alison Ming, Jerome Neufeld and Jean-Marc Chomaz; and provided the perfect opportunity to see lots of pretty videos about fluid flows (Fig. 1). Having done an undergraduate course in Meteorology, a lot of these gave me a refresher of things I should already know, but it was refreshing to see how other lecturers approach the same material. 

The most interesting core lectures to me were those regarding renewable energy, given by Riwal Plougonuen and Alex Stegner. Plougonuen lectured us on wind turbines, telling us how they worked and why they are designed like they are – did you know that actually the most efficient wind turbines have 2 blades, but the vast majority have three for better structural stability? On the other hand, Stegner spoke to us about hydroelectricity, and I learned that Norway produces nearly all of its electricity through hydropower. Other highlights from these core lectures include watching a video of a research hut being swamped by an avalanche (Nathalie Vriend, see video at the link here), and seeing Jerome Neufeld demonstrate ice flows using golden syrup (he likes his food!) 

Guest Lectures 

Figure 2. Flow patterns around a sash window with both slots open – the blue arrows showing incoming cold air and the red arrows showing warm flow to the outside. Taken from Megan Davies Wykes’ lecture.

For me, the guest lectures were the highlights of my time at the summer school. These lectures often explored things beyond my area of expertise, and demonstrated just how the fluid mechanics we had learned are highly applicable to many different areas of life. We had a lecture about building ventilation from Megan Davies Wykes, which made me realise that adequately ventilating a room is more than simply cracking open a window – you have to consider everything from the size of the room, outside wind speed, how many windows there are, and even the body heat from people inside the room. Davies Wykes’s passion about people using their sash windows correctly will always stick with me – turns out you need to open both the top and the bottom panes for the best ventilation (something she emphasised more than once!), see Fig. 2.  

Figure 3. Demonstration of how droplets and plumes of air from the mouth are kept closer to the body when wearing a mask (Bhagat et al. 2020).

Fittingly, we also had a lecture from Paul Linden about the transmission of Covid, and he demonstrated how effective masks are at preventing transmission using a great visualisation (Fig. 3). It was great to have topics such as these that are relevant in today’s world, and provided yet another real-world application of the fluid dynamics we had learned. 

Breakout Discussion Sessions 

Every afternoon, the day’s lecturers returned and invited us to ask them questions about their lectures, or just have an intelligent discussion about their area of expertise. Admittedly these sessions could get a little awkward when everyone was too tired to ask anything towards the end of the long two weeks, but these sessions were still incredibly useful. They provided us the means to speak to a professional in their field about their research, and allowed us time to network and ask them some challenging questions. 

Concluding Remarks 

Of course, over the course of the two weeks we learned so much more than what I described above, and yet again demonstrates the versatility of the field! The summer school as a whole was organised really well and the lecturers were engaging and genuinely interested in hearing about us and our projects. I would highly recommend attending this summer school next year to any PhD student – the scope of the school was so broad that I am sure there will be something for everyone in the programme, and fingers crossed it goes ahead in Paris next year! 

References 

Bhagat, R., Davies Wykes, M., Dalziel, S., & Linden, P. (2020). Effects of ventilation on the indoor spread of COVID-19. Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 903, F1. doi:10.1017/jfm.2020.720 

Forecast Verification Summer School

lilygreigLeave a comment

Lily Greig – l.greig@pgr.reading.ac.uk

A week-long summer school on forecast verification was held jointly at the end of June by the MPECDT (Mathematics of Planet Earth Centre for Doctoral Training) and JWGFVR (Joint Working Group on Forecast Verification Research). The school featured lectures from scientists and academics from many different countries around the world including Brazil, USA and Canada. They each specialised in different topics within forecast verification. Participants gained a large overview of the field and how the fields within it interact.

Structure of school

The virtual school consisted of lectures from individual members of the JWGFVR on their own subjects, along with drop-in sessions for asking questions and dedicated time to work on group projects. Four groups of 4-5 students were given an individual forecast verification challenge. The themes of the projects were precipitation forecasts, comparing high resolution global model and local area model wind speed forecasts, and ensemble seasonal forecasts. The latter was the topic of our project.

Content

The first lecture was given by Barbara Brown, who provided a broad summary of verification and gave examples of questions that verifiers may ask themselves as they attempt to assess the “goodness” of a forecast. The next day, a lecture by Barbara Casati covered continuous scores (verification of continuous variables e.g., temperature), such as linear bias, mean-squared error (MSE) and Pearson coefficient. She also outlined the deficits of different scores and how it is best to use a variety of them when assessing the quality of a forecast. Marion Mittermaier then spoke about categorical scores (yes/no events or multi category events such as precipitation type). She gave examples such as contingency tables which portray how well a model is able to predict a given event, based on hit rates (how often the model predicted an event when the event happened), and false alarm rates (how often the model predicted the event when it didn’t happen). Further lectures were given by Ian Joliffe on methods of determining the significance of your forecast scores, Nachiketa Acharya on probabilistic scores and ensembles, Caio Coelho on sub-seasonal to seasonal timescales, and then Raghavendra Ashrit, Eric Gilleland and Caren Marzban on severe weather, spatial verification and experimental design. The lectures have been made available online and you can find them here.

Forecast Verification

So, forecast verification is as it sounds: a part of assessing the ‘goodness’ of a forecast as opposed to its value. Verification is helpful for economic purposes (e.g. decision making), as well as administrative and scientific ones (e.g. identifying model flaws). The other aspect of measuring how well a forecast is performing is knowing the user’s needs, and therefore how to apply the forecast. It is important to consider the goal of your verification process beforehand, as it will outline your choice of metrics and your assessment of them. An example of how forecast goodness hinges on the user was given by Barbara in her talk: a precipitation forecast may have a spatial offset of where a rain patch falls, but if both observation and forecast fall along the flight path, this may be all the aviation traffic strategic planner needs to know. For a watershed manager on the ground, however, this would not be a helpful forecast. The lecturers also emphasised the importance of performing many different measures on a forecast and then understanding the significance of your measures in order to help you understand its overall goodness. Identifying standards of comparison for your forecast is also important, such as persistence or climatology. Then there are further challenges such as spatial verification, which requires methods of ‘matching’ the location of your observations with the model predictions on the model grid.

Figure 1: Problem statement for group presentation on 2m temperature ensemble seasonal forecasts, presented by Ryo Kurashina

Group Project

Our project was on verification of 2 metre temperature ensemble seasonal forecasts (see Figure 1). We were looking at seasonal forecast data with a 1-month lead time for the summer months for three different models and investigating ways of validating the forecasts, finally deciding which one was the better. We decided to focus on the models’ ability to predict hot and cold events as a simple metric for El Nino. We looked at scatter plots and rank histograms to investigate the biases in our data, Brier scores for assessing model accuracy (level of agreement between forecast and truth) and Receiver Operating Characteristic curves to look model skill (the relative accuracy of the forecast over some reference forecast). The ROC curve (see Fig. 2) refers to the curve formed by plotting hit rates against false alarm rates based on probability thresholds. The further above the diagonal line your curve lies, the better your forecast is at discriminating events compared to a random coin toss. The combination of these verification methods were used to assess which model we thought was best.

Of course, virtual summer schools are less than ideal compared to the real (in person) deal, but with Teams meetings, shared code and chat channel we made the most of it. It was fun to work with everyone, even (or especially?) if the topic was new for all of us.

Figure 2: Presenting our project during group project presentations on Friday

Conclusions

The summer school was incredibly smoothly run, very engaging to people both new and experienced in the topic and provided plenty of opportunity to ask questions to the enthusiastic lecturers. Would recommend to PhD students working with forecasts and wanting to assess them!

SWIFT and YESS International Summer School, Kumasi, Ghana

Alex Doyle1 Comment

Email: a.j.doyle@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Last month, from the 21st July until the 3rd August 2019, I was in Ghana attending the African SWIFT and YESS International Summer School. What a catchy name you are probably thinking. SWIFT, or Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques, is a programme of research and capability building, led by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), and funded by the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund. The project aims to improve African weather forecasting, especially on seasonal timescales, as well as build capability in related research. It’s worth a quick Google search at some point, and there are several people involved in the project at the University of Reading. YESS, the Young Earth System Scientists community, is an international, multidisciplinary network of early career researchers. Catchy!

Anyway, all this contributed toward a really remarkable summer school in tropical West Africa, with people from many different institutions and nations across Europe and Africa attending the summer school and science meeting alongside. It was also another chance to get consistently barraged with Brexit questions by a baffled international audience.

The days were long but engaging, with lectures, practical sessions and workshops on a huge variety of topics in tropical meteorology – from Rossby waves, to the monsoon, to remote sensing applications. It was quickly evident how tricky tropical African weather is to forecast. It is largely driven by convection, which is very difficult to forecast accurately on a small spatio-temporal scale, unlike nice, large mid-latitude weather systems. Furthermore, several different atmospheric features are at play. This is where we were introduced to the wonderful West African synoptic analysis/forecast charts (see below for an example of mine). We also had a chance to present our posters, with many of those from the science meeting – experts in their fields – coming round to look, and this was a fantastic networking opportunity. It was really beneficial being around other early career scientists in the same specific field as me, from different places around the world. It cannot be said enough how important this is for PhD students, who for the most part live quite an isolated existence where when you switch from your native English language to your ‘PhD language’, only your supervisors and a few select others can understand you!

For me, it is in the people attending where the strength of the summer school really lies. The people in Kumasi, Ghana were amazing people. They not only keep you going through 2 weeks of long days, 3 dozen lectures, and 400 meals of rice, but they reminded me what it meant to be a scientist. I found, to my discredit, that most of the students there were far more studious than I was, not because they were any less clever or anything like that, but because they simply loved knowledge, and loved applying it (meteorology is great for quickly being able to see how what we know manifests itself in the real world). On reflection, I think they are more aware of the fact millions of people (moreso in Africa than any other continent) simply do not have access to such knowledge, but in Kumasi we were learning about African meteorology from world experts. They did not take it for granted, in fact, it was clearly what drove them. Science wasn’t just an occupation for them, it had tangible importance, which came across in the way they spoke about their science, but also their future ambitions, hopes and plans.

Further to this, meeting people across universities, countries, and continents also brings a different perspective on your work and where it fits into the wider collection of research in the area. One sad point was learning how hard it was for African students to get PhDs. Not only do they typically have to travel much further (i.e. typically to Europe or the US) in order to get one, but they also rely on getting funding, which is often the final obstacle even after they have found the right PhD project. It’s a real shame.

So after 2 long weeks (and a very hot football game on a gravelly pitch with no shoes) I came back physically exhausted, but academically I was refreshed with lots of new ideas floating round, but even more importantly newfound inspiration. In the now famous words of the provost of the college during the closing ceremony, “let your research be SWIFT and YESS.”

Fluid Dynamics of Sustainability and the Environment Summer School

Mark Prosser1 Comment

Email: m.prosser@pgr.reading.ac.uk

From the 1st – 12th of July 2019, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Fluid Dynamics of Sustainability and the Environment (FDSE) summer school held at Ecole Polytechnique on the southern outskirts of Paris. Although it was held at Ecole Polytechnique this year, it alternates with the University of Cambridge, where it will be held in 2020.

As hinted at in the title, the summer school explores the fluid dynamical aspects of planet Earth, including, but not limited to: the atmosphere, the ocean, the cryosphere and the solid Earth, and was of particular relevance to me because I study clear-air turbulence (a fluid dynamical phenomenon) and its impact on aviation. To get a better sense of the summer school, have a watch of this 3-minute promotion video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGoF0L8gqXw

It was a busy, action-packed 2 weeks. The days consisted of: 4 hours of lectures held each morning (coffee was provided), followed by either lab or numerical practical sessions in the afternoons and something social (wine was provided) such as a poster session, barbecue, and an environmentally-themed film night followed by a discussion of the film’s (The Day After Tomorrow) fluid dynamical accuracy (or not, as the case may be!). During the mid-programme weekend, we were put up in a hostel in central Paris, treated to an evening on a moored boat on the Seine (champagne was provided) and then left to our own devices to explore Paris.

The boat on the Seine even had its own dance floor.

The other students were great, with all sorts of backgrounds/PhD projects that linked in one way or another to the FDSE theme. Many interesting and diverse conversations were had, as well as a great deal of fun and laughter! No doubt many of the people who met here both this year and others will collaborate scientifically in the future.

Not having come from a maths/physics background, I found a lot of the mathematical content quite challenging, but I made copious notes and my interest in and appreciation for the subject greatly increased. As I progress throughout my PhD (I am currently still in my first year), I feel many of the concepts that I encountered here are likely to resurface in a slow-burn fashion and I can see myself returning to the lecture material as and when I meet related concepts.

In particular, gaining an understanding of what an instability is and studying the different types was eye-opening, and seeing Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities — which cause the shear that generates the clear-air turbulence I study in my PhD — form in a tube of dyed fluid was a particularly memorable moment for me.

Kelvin-Helmholtz billows forming in a tube.

Apart from being very interesting theoretically, fluid dynamics also has many practical applications. For example, insufficient understanding and modelling of the behaviour of plumes at the Fukushima nuclear reactor led to hydrogen gas concentrations exceeding 8%, resulting in dangerous explosions. Many other such examples could be given.

The summer school was well-organised and many of the lecturers and guest speakers were both highly entertaining and informative, and really bought the subject to life with their enthusiasm for it. I highly recommend it to anyone with a related PhD!

The 2019 cohort in front of Ecole Polytechnique.

The 2nd ICTP Summer School in Hierarchical Modelling of Climate Dynamics

kierannpope1 Comment

Between the 1st and 12th July 2019, I attended the 2nd International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Summer School in Hierarchical Modelling of Climate Dynamics at the ICTP guesthouse in Trieste, Italy. The focus of this summer school was on convective organisation and climate sensitivity, which is incredibly relevant to my PhD topic: Interactions between Radiation and Convective Organisation. So, I felt I had to attend this summer school (and not just because my lead supervisor, Chris Holloway, was one of the lead directors).

This was an international conference with staff and students coming together from all corners of the globe. In total there were 111 people attending the school, made up of 84 participants, 20 speakers and 7 directors. Without knowing anyone else going to this school (except my supervisor), I was initially a little apprehensive as I didn’t know what to expect but as soon as I met some of the other students I was put at ease. It was amazing to meet other people working on very similar projects to me, especially since my supervisor was the only other person I previously knew working on this convective organisation topic. So, it was great to not only make new friends but also meet potential future colleagues.

Group photo of all those involved in the summer school.

As expected, the schedule was pretty intense, with most days working from 9am until 6pm except for lunch and a couple of coffee breaks. The mornings consisted of a couple of lectures given by some of the leading experts in the field including Kerry Emanuel, Bjorn Stevens and Sandrine Bony, then in the afternoons we would do some group project work. In our groups of 4 or 5, we analysed some numerical model data, to study how convection organises within our model. I was surprised to find that our group tasks were very similar to what I’ve been doing for my first year, so I was a bit worried that we’d manage to do what I’ve been working on this past year within a couple of weeks! But actually, it ended up giving me almost too many new ideas for my own research! In the second week, each group then had to give a quick presentation on their work.

Talk by Kerry Emanuel about the consequences of climate change on our weather.

Each day, after the lectures and the group work, we were free to do what we wanted for the rest of the evening. With the venue being right on the coast, and with temperatures consistently between 26 – 32C in the day, it was perfect to relax by the sea or go for a swim. Or, if we were bored with the relentless supply of pasta in the canteen then we’d often go into town in search of pizza and of course gelato!

  • View from my room at the ICTP Guesthouse.
  • Exploring Trieste town centre.
  • The greatest gelato in the world.

At the start of the second week, there was a poster session in which a lot of the participants brought posters to showcase their projects. This was the first time I’d presented my research at an event like this, so it was great to show what I’ve been working on in front of so many people. It was exciting to see so many people genuinely interested in my work and I got lots of useful feedback and ideas.

Presenting my work at the poster session.

So overall, this summer school far surpassed my expectations and I would strongly recommend attending a summer school if you get the chance. I learned so much through the lectures, the group work, through chatting to the professors and students and through presenting my work. I now have far too many ideas to explore with my research, probably more than I can realistically achieve! Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the school was being able to meet so many people working in this field. Since this topic is very niche, I have been very lucky to meet a very large proportion of the people working in the topic so I’m sure some of our paths will cross in the future and we will be able to collaborate on future projects.