Professor Hannah Cloke awarded Vice-Chancellor’s Public Communications Prize 2015

NERC H ClokeCongratulations to Hannah Cloke, who has won another prestigious award for her high impact research and media engagement.  Hannah has been awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Public Communications Prize, which she will receive at the meeting of the University Court next month.

The prize is in recognition of Hannah’s work during the flooding crisis, with high profile appearances in the national and international media which led to a secondment to Government to advise Downing Street on the ongoing crisis.

To find out more about Hannah’s work, check out her staff profile and follow her on Twitter.

 

Professor Hannah Cloke wins NERC Impact Award

Hannah with Professor Dame Julia Slingo DBE, Chief Scientist at the Met Office, Professor Duncan Wingham, Chief Executive of NERC and Professor Alan Thorpe, Director-General of ECMWF

Hannah with Professor Dame Julia Slingo DBE, Chief Scientist at the Met Office, Professor Duncan Wingham, Chief Executive of NERC and Professor Alan Thorpe, Director-General of ECMWF

Professor Hannah Cloke won the NERC Impact Award for Early Career Researcher at an awards ceremony in London last night. This is awarded to  “an early-career researcher who has achieved exceptional economic and/or societal impact within the UK or internationally” and recognises Hannah’s work in understanding flood risk.

The awards are the first in a series of activities and events that will mark NERC’s 50th anniversary. The programme of events will demonstrate how NERC science has contributed to the UK over the past 50 years.

The award was presented by Helen Czerski, currently a Research Fellow at UCL, who is quoted as saying “Early career researchers are the most diverse group of scientists- we need that diversity of ideas”.

About Hannah

Hannah Cloke is a hydrologist and physical geographer specializing in land surface modelling, flood forecasting and catchment hydrology. She works closely with the Environment Agency, the Met Office, the Flood Forecasting Centre and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts as well as a wide range of other national and international partners. She advised government on the Jan/Feb 2014 floods crisis and provided substantial expert commentary in the media.

Hannah is currently a member of the of the Environment Agency-DEFRA R&D flood science programme advisory group. She is a member of the NERC Peer Review Panel C, Floods theme coordinator for the International Hydrological Programme (IHP): FRIEND network, and a committee member of the EGU Hydrology section: Catchment hydrology. She is on the editorial board of the journals Meteorological Applications and Hydrology and Earth System Sciences and is guest editor for Hydrological Processes.

Hannah is an active member of the HEPEX project and recently served on the British Hydrological Society committee.

Review on modelling climate impact on floods highlights large uncertainties in results

Road closed due to flooding

The UK has over £82 billion worth of assets at risk from river flooding and flooded homes cause misery to thousands of people.

The NERC programme Flood Risk from Extreme Events (FREE) is research to predict floods minutes to weeks and seasons to decades ahead.

Research by Dr Hannah Cloke, Reader in Hydrology, features in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society‘s Special Issue on Flooding from Extreme Events published  this month. The article underlines the challenges in using the current generation of Regional Climate Models for local climate impact studies on flooding.

Looking at the current best practice in modelling climate impact on floods with ensemble climate projections, the study highlights the stark differences in results when using different methods and also the strong assumptions made in using Model Output Statistics to produce the estimates of future river discharge.

Read the article on-line: Modelling climate impact on floods with ensemble climate projections

View the Special Issue: Flood Risk from Extreme Events FREE 

Read about the NERC FREE programme

Read about Dr Hannah Cloke