email: r.frew@pgr.reading.ac.uk

Between the 11th-16th March myself and four other PhDs and post docs attended the Ocean in Weather and Climate (OiWC) course at the Met Office, Exeter. This NERC advanced training course was aimed at PhDs, postdocs and beyond. It provided a great opportunity to spend a week meeting other Oceanography researchers at varying stages of their career, and to expand your understanding of the oceans role in climate beyond the scope of your own work.

The week kicked off with an ice breaker where we had do some ‘Scientific speed dating’, chatting to other participants about: Where are you from? What do you work on? What is your main hobby? What is the biggest question in your field of research? This set the tone for a very interactive week full of interesting discussions between all attendees and speakers alike. Course participants were accommodated at The Globe Inn situated in Topsham, a cute village-sized town full of pastel-coloured houses, cosy pubs, art galleries, and beautiful riverside walks to stretch your legs in the evenings.

The days consisted of four 1.5 hour sessions, split up by caffeine and biscuit breaks to recharge before the next session.

Topics covered in the lecture-style talks included…

• Dynamical Theory
• Modelling the Ocean
• Observations
• Ocean-atmosphere coupling
• Air-sea fluxes
• High Resolution Ocean modelling in coupled forecast systems
• The Meridional Overturning Circulation
• The Southern Ocean in climate and climatic change
• Climate variability on diurnal, seasonal, annual, inter-annual, decadal timescales
• Climate extremes
• Climate sensitivity, heat uptake and sea level.

 

All the talks were very interesting and were followed by some stimulating discussion. Each session provided an overview of each topic and an indication of the current research questions in each area at the moment.

In the post lunch session, there were group practical sessions. These explored observational ARGO float data and model output. The practicals, written in iPython notebooks, were designed to let us play with some data, giving us a series of questions to trigger group discussions to deepen understanding of topics covered that morning.

The course also included some ‘softer’ evening talks, giving research career advice in a more informal manner. Most evenings were spent exploring the lovely riverside walks and restaurants/pubs of Topsham. The final evening was spent all together at the Cosy Club in Exeter, rounding off a very interesting and enjoyable week!