Model Under the Hood
As a senior forecaster at MET Norway in Tromsø, I was in contact with users and learned about their needs. I started to work together with the model developers at MET Norway to understand more about how the model that we used works “under the hood”. I then got the opportunity to work with evaluation of polar low forecasts at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). While there, I used case studies to compare the performance of the ECMWF and Arome Arctic models. My ph.d., which is part of the Alertness research project, will be a continuation of this work.
Troubleshooting with Case Studies
The aim of the Ph.d. project is to evaluate how good the forecasts were during a number of historical weather events that had a big impact on communities and infrastructure. I will then test the improvements that other researchers do. This way, we can see how much progress we make.
We want to include events from large measurement campaigns with more observations available than usual, such as as for example during the recent Year of Polar Prediction. We will also use particularly interesting cases that forecasters on duty in Tromsø have reported. My own main focus will be on polar low events and maritime icing.
Polar lows can cause sudden changes from clear and calm weather to heavy snow showers and strong, gusty winds that lead to icing, turbulence and avalanches. They are challenging to forecast because of their small scale and rapid development. Maritime icing happen when there is a combination of high waves and low air temperature. The sea spray freezes on ships and thick layers of ice build up. This adds a tremendous extra weight to the ship, that can potentially cause it to sink. At the same time, rescue boats and equipment freeze in and become useless. In addition, I will study cases of fog and aviation icing together with other people in the project. Hopefully, this work will lead to better forecasts to assist those who live in the Arctic and Northern Norway, and if even one life is saved by that, it will be worth every single effort.