Weather
Gregory Carbin gives a presentation on the weather extremes of the winter 2014 in the US.
Length: 25 minutes.
The cool season months of 2014 (JFM) over the U.S. mainland can best be described as much colder than normal across portions of the Great Lakes, Northeast, and Midwest, and much drier and warmer than normal over the west coast, especially California. This talk offered a review of three aspects of the winter/early spring seasons. The first was a review of 12 UTC temperatures for every day in January across the continental U.S. and the relationship of some of the colder mornings with the longer-term record of January mornings back to 1979. The second event of note was the onset of exceptional drought in California. The third event, coming at the end of March, was a look at significant cyclogenesis off the U.S. eastern seaboard on March 25-26.
Hamidou Hama highlights the major socio-economic and environmental impacts of dust, focuses on the meteorological processes at various scales that are responsible for raising dust/sand storms in the arid Sahara Desert and the semi arid Sahel at its fringes.
Length: 40 minutes.
This presentation, after highlighting the major socio-economic and environmental impacts of dust, focuses on the meteorological processes at various scales that are responsible for raising dust/sand storms in the arid Sahara Desert and the semi arid Sahel at its fringes. The challenges facing the weather forecaster in forecasting such high impact weather phenomena and the importance of satellite remote sensing in their monitoring were also addressed here.
Christopher Perez gives an insight into Typhoons and their features.
Length: 35 minutes.
Christopher Perez, a weather forecaster of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) will gave an insight into Typhoons and their features. Specifically, he presented the chronology of events regarding Typhoon "Haiyan", one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, which devastated portions of Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, on November 8, 2013.
Jean Bidlot presents probabilistic forecasting based on ensemble technique to ascertain the probability of extreme weather, including wave parameters.
Length: 45 minutes.
For any operation at sea or in the coastal area, forecasts of the sea state are essential. The quality of those forecasts has steadily improved over the years as attested by the successful forecasts of the many large waves events that affected the Euro-Atlantic coast during last winter. Nevertheless, forecasts of high impact weather can still be uncertain. For this reason, probabilistic forecasting based on ensemble technique should be used to ascertain the probability of extreme weather, including wave parameters, as well as possible alternative scenarios. It is known that freak waves do occur and can result in major damages and losses. Predicting those events is more challenging, nevertheless advances in the theoretical frameworks for those situations have been made and has resulted in new forecasts parameters.
Helge Tuschy's talk offered an insight into the ingredients-based forecasting method, which assists an operational forecaster in preparing well ahead of an active thunderstorm day.
Length: 60 minutes.
This talk offered an insight into the ingredients-based forecasting method, which assists an operational forecaster in preparing well ahead of an active thunderstorm day. Mr. Tuschy also gave an overview about certain ingredients which could result in heavy rainfall and flash flooding (due to deep moist convection). He ended his talk with a short overview about ESTOFEX, the European Storm Forecast Experiment.
Zanita Avotniece gives a brief presentation on the use of satellite data for climate applications and introduces an online satellite-based climate viewer.
Length: 30 minutes.
Zanita Avotniece gave a brief presentation on the use of satellite data for climate applications and introduced an online satellite-based climate viewer that has been published recently.
Ivan Guettler discusses climate extremes in the context of observed climate change.
Length: 30 minutes
Climate extremes were discussed in the context of the observed climate change and associated trends. The issue of attributing specific weather extreme to climate change was stressed. Several impacts on human activities was presented and estimated economical and human losses due to the weather and climate extremes were compared over different regions.
Overview on the H SAF satellite derived precipitation products.
The EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility for Operational Hydrology and Water Management (H SAF) provides satellite products and user services in support to Operational Hydrology, Meteorology, Risk Management and Water Management. Since 2005, H SAF science and research bridge into operations through the development and dissemination of soil moisture, precipitation and snow products based on the exploitation of primary EUMETSAT missions. During the fourth Continuous Development and Operations Phase (CDOP-4, from 2022 to 2027), H SAF products will be primarily based on the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and the EUMETSAT Polar System -Second Generation (EPS-SG) missions. Current products are based on the use of the full constellation of microwave (MW) radiometers for Level 2 passive microwave (MW) precipitation products and for MW/IR combined products for near-real time applications over the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) full disk area. The presentation will provide a full overview of the current status and future development of the operational precipitation product portfolio as well as the product quality assessment strategy and results. Examples of applications for specific case studies will be also presented.
Lecture slides (Panegrossi)...
Overview on the H SAF satellite derived soil moisture products.
The EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Support to Operational Hydrology and Water Management (H SAF) develops and provides operational satellite products for precipitation, snow and soil moisture. These satellite products have a wide range of applications, but especially play a key role in numerical weather prediction.
The H SAF soil moisture product suite is composed of surface and root zone soil moisture products available at various spatial resolution, ranging from 1 km to 50 km. Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) products are based on backscatter observations provided by the Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) onboard the series of Metop satellites using the EUMETSAT H SAF TU Wien soil moisture retrieval algorithm, whereas Root Zone Soil Moisture (RZSM) products assimilate H SAF SSM products within the ECMWF/H SAF land data assimilation system. At the moment, two ASCAT instruments are currently operational on-board Metop-B and Metop-C.
Introduction of the H SAF project, the history of the SAFs, the introduction of the HSAF Workshop and its agenda from the main organizers.
An introduction of the HSAF project, the history of the SAFs, the introduction of the HSAF Workshop and its agenda from the main organizers.
Christine Träger-Chatterjee presents the prototype Data Cube for Drought and Vegetation Monitoring, and tools to manipulate the data in the cube.
EUMETSAT provides a prototype Data Cube for Drought and Vegetation Monitoring, and tools to manipulate the data in the cube. This prototype consists of long-term data records on a regular latitude / longitude grid and in CF-compliant NetCDF via THREDDS.
The prototype seeks to explore how well EUMETSAT and partners can bring together data from multiple sources and from multiple grids to ease barriers to use of the data for thematic applications.
This presentation reports on the lessons learnt as regards the creation, provision and use of the data cube.
Mariette Vreugdenhil demonstrates the use of the EUMETSAT H SAF soil moisture (H116, SM) and SM2RAIN (H64) products to predict yields for Morocco and Senegal.
We demonstrate the use of the EUMETSAT HSAF soil moisture (H116, SM) and SM2RAIN (H64) products to predict yields for Morocco and Senegal. Root-zone SM was calculated from SM, and NDVI was used as a vegetation indicator. Data on yields was obtained from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Yield prediction was done for main crops using multiple linear regression and a time for space approach. SM improved yield prediction, especially early in the growing season, improving early warning capabilities. NDVI showed better predictions later in the growing season. SM2RAIN outperformed other benchmark rainfall datasets.