Author Archives: Stephen Burt

How TAMSAT have been supporting African people for over 35 years

By Ross Maidment The University of Reading’s TAMSAT group ( www.tamsat.org.uk ) have helped pioneer the use of satellite imagery in rainfall estimation across Africa since the early 1980s when the group was first established. Thanks to some bright and innovative minds … Continue reading

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Flying through the Indian monsoon

By Andy Turner Forecasting the monsoon in India continues to be a challenge for scientists, both for the season ahead and long into the future, the monsoon being vital for 80% of the country’s annual rainfall and securing the food … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Climate modelling, Monsoons, Numerical modelling | Leave a comment

From kilobytes to petabytes for global change research: take the skills survey!

By Vicky Lucas Institute for Environmental Analytics If you deal with megabytes of environmental sample data, or gigabytes of sensor data, or terabytes of model data or petabytes of remote sensing data, then I’d like you to take a survey.  … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Climate, Climate change, Climate modelling, Numerical modelling, Remote sensing, Teaching & Learning | Tagged | Leave a comment

When meteorology altered the course of history (or maybe not)

By Bob Plant The Battle of Milvian Bridge was fought on 28 October in the year 312 CE. The atmospheric conditions there on that day may have had a critical influence on the course of human history ever since. It’s … Continue reading

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The value of future observations

By Alison Fowler The atmosphere and oceans are being routinely observed by a myriad of instruments. These instruments are positioned on board orbiting satellites, aircraft and ships, surface weather stations, and even balloons.  The information collected by these instruments can … Continue reading

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How can a hurricane near the USA affect the weather in Europe?

By John Methven It may seem bizarre that processes occurring within clouds near the USA, involving tiny ice crystals and water droplets, can have an influence on high-impact weather events thousands of kilometres away in Europe, and our ability to predict them … Continue reading

Posted in Environmental physics, Measurements and instrumentation, Numerical modelling, University of Reading, Weather forecasting | Leave a comment

Where is the high probability?

By Peter Jan van Leeuwen To determine the uncertainty in weather and climate forecasts an ensemble of model runs is used, see Figure 1. Each model run represents a plausible scenario of what the atmosphere or the climate system will do, … Continue reading

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Producing quantitative estimates of radiative forcing

By Will Davies Last year the Paris climate conference agreed to an action plan to limit global warming to below 2 degC – preferably 1.5 degC. Various initiatives are measuring performance against this target – such as the global warming … Continue reading

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El Niño in West and Central Africa

By Chimene Daleu   What is El Niño, how often does it occur, and why is everyone so concerned this year? El Niño is the warming phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During an El Niño event, the … Continue reading

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Helping National Grid manage the sudden growth in solar power

By Daniel Drew “In Britain it had been a year without summer. Wet spring had merged imperceptibly into bleak autumn. For months the sky had remained a depthless grey. Sometimes it rained, but mostly it was just dull, a land … Continue reading

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