Past Meetings
Past meetings are listed below. Please click on the title of the talk for a pdf copy of the presentation.
A list of the upcoming meetings can be found here.
Thursday 19th April 2012
Two Perspectives of Weather Forecasting
"Forecasting for Army Helicopter Operations in Yorkshire", by Clive Mills-Hicks (FRMetS)
Met Office forecasters at Dishforth Airfield, North Yorkshire, provide a 24 hour (weekday) forecast service for 9 Regiment Army Air Corps, which is part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, the British Army's premier rapid response formation. The regiment is currently involved in operations in Afghanistan and previously took part in operations in Macedonia and Iraq.
Air crew have to maintain ‘currency’ in a wide range of competencies – including day and night flying. Helicopter sorties are typically an hour and half or less in duration, so the forecasting problem is very much one of low level nowcasting. The talk gives a flavour of the forecasting issues – the hazards, the operational limits, and the appropriate observational, forecasting and model product tools.
"Forecasting for Metra and Weather Commerce", by Tony Ramsay, General Manager, Weather Commerce Ltd
Weather Commerce is a successful private weather forecasting company traditionally providing services for the Retail sector and more recently they have branched out into the Energy and Media markets. The talk will provide an overview of the business, the challenges it faces and the importance of data and numerical models in providing their forecast.
13th March 2012
"Winter Maintenance Programme", Russell Martin, Highway Maintenance Manager, Leeds City Council
The talk will focus on how Leeds plans for and manages its winter service. Leeds has a network of some 3000km of road and the challenge of keeping this network open in winter is sometimes quite onerous.
The following areas will be discussed: the legal duty as Highway Authority; Winter Plan, Resources and Gritting Routes; Specialist Weather Forecast Provision; Weather Out Stations; How forecasts are used to formulate daily actions (to grit or not to grit!); Medium, long term and ensemble forecasting; Managing Salt Supplies and resilience; Managing expectations.
The talk will give the audience an insight into how meteorological information is used on a daily basis, throughout the winter months, in a very practical way for the benefit of society.
9th February 2012
"Up Close and Personal - Weather from a Gliding Perspective", George Rowden, Yorkshire Gliding Club
The talk will start with a brief review of modern gliding in terms of glider performance and instrumentation. The main part of the talk will describe the meteorological conditions required to generate the 4 major sources of lift used for soaring in the UK, including reference to synoptic charts and tephigrams. Weather related factors having an adverse effect on the soaring conditions and a typical flight for each type of lift will also be described. Relevant cloud photos and satellite images will be shown. The talk will conclude with a description of the sources of weather information available to and used by glider pilots to plan their flights.
12th January 2012
"Lightning into Space", Dr Martin Fullekrug, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Bath.
The recent discovery of lightning into space and brief illuminations above thunderclouds have attracted the broadest interest by the public media. These illuminations are termed sprites, gigantic jets, elves, halos, and blue jets. Sprites for example, are reddish illuminations of the Earth's atmosphere ranging from 40-80 km height and extending up to 50 km in width. Sprites are seen above the largest thunderstorms on planet Earth, and they are mainly initiated by super strong lightning flashes to the ground. Recent research on sprites focused on their impact on the Earth's atmosphere and in particular on the possibility to be associated with natural particle accelerators above our heads. These novel phenomena demonstrate that the area above thunderstorms is one of the least well known 'terra incognita' of the Earth's atmosphere and many more discoveries are expected in the years to come.
15th November 2011
"Climate Change and Crops", Prof. Andy Challinor, University of Leeds, Lead author in the forth coming IPCC report.
Find out how climate change will affect crops, through learning about the experiments that are performed in the field and the computer simulations that are carried out. How accurate are these simulations?
What can we really know about climate many years into the future and how it will affect us? The talk will also present some ideas on how food systems can be adapted for the future, for example by growing new varieties of crop. Do we have the varieties of crop that we'll need for future climates? What can we do about it if we don't?
20th October 2011
"UK Airborne Science: A brief history via the Sahara, Borneo and the M25". Dr Jim McQuaid.
The atmosphere is very much three dimensional, weather systems traverse it at a range of speeds and pollution is emitted from the surface which subsequently drifts upwards into the free troposphere. Sometimes weather speeds up this vertical ventilation via the movements of frontal systems and other convective features. Often it is better to explore these processes from a spatial perspective rather than observing from a single ground site. Installing instrumentation onto aircraft can open up a whole new set of opportunities for atmospheric scientists.
This talk will introduce some of the recent history of airborne observations in the UK, including the transition from an RAF C130 Hercules to the current aircraft, a BAe 146 (www.faam.ac.uk). Some of the various uses of the aircraft will be presented, from keeping European airspace safe after the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, chasing dust storms in the Sahara, sampling emissions from tropical rainforests in Borneo through to measuring London's pollution by flying around the M25.
21st September 2011
"North African Meteorology and field observations over the Sahara Desert." Dr Cathryn Birch, University of Leeds.
The types of weather and climate that exist in the north half of Africa vary considerably from the hot, arid Saharan desert to the cooler, coastal regions in the south. This talk will give an overview of the types of weather phenomenon that occur in North Africa. This includes the West African monsoon, desert sandstorms and why the region affects hurricane development in the Atlantic Ocean. A field campaign is due to take place this year during spring and summer in the central Sahara desert. The aim of this project is to make some of the first in-situ meteorology observations ever made in this large and uninhabited region. Ground instrumentation will be deployed across the desert and the British research aircraft (BAe 146-301) will make measurements of the atmosphere on regular flights from southern Morocco. I will talk about my experiences during this campaign and show some results from it.
5th May 2011
"The challenges for 21st Century Meteorology - for the science and the scientists", Professor Paul Hardaker, Chief Exec of the RMS
Meteorology is a relatively young science and there has never been such an interesting time to be a meteorologist, in part because of the many challenges that still face us in the prediction of weather and climate, whether it's providing high resolution forecasts, ensuring climate models have the complexity they need or in the greater use of ensembles and probabilistic forecasts. It is important that as a community we are enthusing and developing the next generation of meteorologists who will help us to tackle these issues. However accurate our predictions and forecasts are it is important that they are communicated effectively and that, in the case of climate change, the science is explained in a way that is easy to understand and to engage with. This is particularly important when we are faced with challenging mitigation and adaptation decisions to respond to our changing climate.
6th April 2011
"Flash floods, hail, lightning, microbursts -- the physics of thunderstorms,", Professor Alan Blyth, NCAS, University of Leeds.
23rd Feb 2011
"High Altitude ballooning and photography of the upper atmosphere", Robert Harrison. http://www.robertharrison.org/icarus/wordpress/about/
At the beginning of last year Robert Harrison caused a stir by taking stunning photos of the Earth from an altitude of up to 35 km. Using only cheap camera parts, a weather balloon and lots of ingenuity Robert succeeded in taking a series of photographs of the atmosphere that were so unusual he even had NASA asking him how it was done. In this talk Robert will take us through the technical challenges involved and present some of the photos he has taken on various launches. It’s also a chance to help get involved and analyse some of the weather situations captured from this unique viewpoint.
2nd Feb 2011
"Urban wind energy: style or substance?", Professor Alison Tomlin, Energy and Resources Research Institute, University of Leeds.
Meeting ambitious targets on greenhouse gas emissions within the UK will require a wide range of energy sources to be utilised efficiently. The DTI have suggested that 40% of UK electricity could potentially be produced by energy micro-generation by 2050, with a significant proportion of this provided by small scale wind energy. At the moment however, a large proportion of the potential for small scale wind installations remains untapped. A key factor in the choice of energy generation techniques is obviously the cost, and the feed-in tariff was introduced in order to improve the financial viability of many micro-generation projects which have advantageous carbon payback times. The investment costs remain high however, meaning that accurate financial projections should be carried out in order to assess the feasibility of different sites for small scale wind installation. This involves attempting to predict the potential local wind resource over the lifetime of the turbine. The Carbon Trust has developed on line modelling tools to assist potential users in assessing their wind resource. In urban areas however, air flows are highly affected by interactions with local building structures, leading to large variability in available wind resource over very small distances. Changes to simple models of wind profiles must therefore be made for heterogeneous urban areas, and assessing site viability often requires site specific computational modelling or on-site monitoring. The talk will address particular challenges in understanding wind profiles above geometrically complex urban areas. A revised modelling approach for predicting above roof wind profiles for complex geometries will be introduced. The feasibility of predicting long term wind resource using short time-scale wind assessments coupled with urban reference meteorological measurements (so called Measure Correlate Predict methods) will also be discussed.
10th Nov 2010
"Chasing Tornadoes with VORTEX2”, Dr Lindsay Bennett, ICAS, University of Leeds.
The Verification Of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment took place in the USA during May and June 2009 and 2010. It was the largest and most ambitious study ever undertaken to study tornadoes, with a mobile armada of over 100 scientists and 40 research vehicles. I participated in the field project with a team from the Center for Severe Weather Research who operated 3 mobile radars and six instrumented vehicles. During this talk I will present some of the basic science behind tornadoes and the storms that produce them. I'll describe the instruments that were used to collect the data and the logistics of coordinating such a large fleet of vehicles. In particular I'll talk about my role in the team and some of my experiences of getting up close and personal with severe weather.
29th June 2010
“Reading the sky: Identifying clouds and using them to interpret the weather situation”, Prof Doug Parker, ICAS, University of Leeds
Clouds are visually inspiring phenomena, but they also tell us a great deal about the current weather situation. Many cloud types, and their movement, can also help us to make simple predictions for how the weather will evolve in the next few hours. I will present a short summary of the basic cloud types and how to distinguish them, and I will discuss their relationship to the prevailing atmospheric conditions. Following a refreshment break, there will be an opportunity for discussion of interesting or unusual cloud observations. I will provide some images to form the basis of this discussion, but participants would be welcome to bring their own images, or send them electronically in advance of the meeting to Doug or Sarah, so that we can try to identify and explain them. I am aware that my own expertise is rather theoretical, so I look forward to contributions from other participants with experience of cloud observing.
18th May 2010
“Volcanic ash over Europe - When volcanology meets meteorology”, Anja Schmidt and Dr Peter Knippertz, ICAS, University of Leeds
The transport of ash from the Icelandic Eyjafjalla glacier volcano into northern and central Europe in mid-April led to an unprecedented closure of the European airspace over several days. Volcanologist Anja Schmidt and meteorologist Peter Knippertz will explain how the timing of the eruption with an unusual high-pressure situation conspired to create a truly high-impact natural hazard.
14th April 2010
“Extreme weather, from tornadoes to hurricanes. Dr Ross Reynolds, University of Reading. A joint talk with the Institute of Physics, Yorkshire.
15th March 2010
“Leeds adaptation to Climate change”, Dave Cherry, Leeds City Council.
The talk is about adapting Leeds to climate change, specifically to the current UKCIP09 projections. Three examples will be given of applications for transport, e.g. the new trolleybus or bridge investments, and how they are to be adapted in view of future climate.
2nd March 2010
“Atmospheric Services – What does the atmosphere do for you?” Prof. John Thornes, University of Birmingham.
26th November 2009
The first meeting of the new Yorkshire Centre. Guest speaker: Paul Hudson, BBC Look North Weatherman and Climate Change Correspondent.
