ECMWF delegates ran a series of well-attended sessions at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna from 12 to 17 April and used the opportunity to catch up with the work of fellow scientists.
Director of Research Erland Källén opened the numerical weather prediction (NWP) session with a solicited talk on ‘Recent progress in global, medium-range numerical weather prediction’. He was joined by Thomas Haiden from the Forecasting Department, who talked about the ‘Predictability of cloud fraction in global NWP models’.
“Both talks were well attended and the audience followed them up with good questions. ECMWF was mentioned in several of the talks, both as a benchmark for performance comparisons and as a provider of reanalysis data,” Erland said.
Tim Hewson, also from the Forecasting Department, gave a talk on ‘the morphology of cyclonic windstorms’ and presented posters on statistical downscaling of precipitation forecasts and on improving freezing rain forecasts. “The room was overflowing for the talk and I had plenty of questions, and the footfall for the poster sessions was also high,” he said.
ECMWF’s Tim Hewson gave a talk and contributed to two poster sessions
According to Thomas Haiden, who has attended many EGU General Assemblies since they were launched in the 1980s, “meteorology and NWP used to be a side show, but this year it was quite clear that this has changed and that the EGU has become an important event for meteorology in Europe.”
Others in ECMWF’s dozen-strong delegation noted that ECMWF seems to have become much better-known in the broader geosciences community in recent years.
Florian Pappenberger from the Forecasting Department organized sessions on ‘ensemble hydro-meteorological forecasting’ and on ‘large-scale hydrology’, which “had people standing as there were no chairs left”. He said he was “particularly pleased about the larger number of times ECMWF was mentioned in hydrology talks and presentations. This is quite different from the situation about 10 years ago, when ECMWF was much less well-known outside the meteorological community.”
Emanuel Dutra from the Research Department, who convened the session on ‘large-scale hydrology’, pointed out that he received a lot of feedback from hydrologist and land surface modellers. “It was clear that ECMWF has an important role to play in this area,” he said.
Gianpaolo Balsamo from the Research Department stood in at short notice for Francesca Di Giuseppe to give a well-received talk on ‘cloud overlap statistics’. His presentation to a packed room of over 100 elicited interest in the papers on which it was based.
There was also great interest in an interactive game co-organized by Louise Arnal from the Forecasting Department, which explored the willingness to pay for a forecast.
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The EGU General Assembly was a special occasion for the head of ECMWF's Marine Prediction Section, Dr Peter Janssen, who received the Fridtjof Nansen Medal for 2015. This medal was established in recognition of the scientific achievements of Fridtjof Nansen and is awarded annually by the EGU for distinguished research in oceanography. |
The conference was attended by 11,837 scientists from 108 countries, according to the organizers. ECMWF participants praised the “intelligently organized programme schedule”, which makes it easy to identify sessions of interest and to put together a personalised programme. The next EGU General Assembly is scheduled for 17 to 22 April 2016 in Vienna.
The EGU General Assembly took place at the Austria Center in Vienna