At the moment, my day-to-day PhD life is pretty typical; I’m working on getting all the data I need to analyse and write up the paper I’m working on. I look forward to writing about this when it begins to take a bit more shape rather than just being a bunch of python scripts! So instead, this is going to be my first “this time last year” post – because this time last year my day-to-day life wasn’t so typical of a PhD student! Going into the third year of my PhD, I was lucky enough to be offered a placement, working at the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF for a shorter but not necessarily easier to remember name) full-time for 4 months, covering the paternity leave of one of the scientists there. For my PhD, I work with ECMWF a lot on a pretty much daily basis, but I’m usually working on my own projects so it was great to spend some time seeing what it was like to work on the more operational (providing flood forecasts) side of things.
So first of all, what actually is ECMWF? It’s a European intergovernmental weather forecasting organisation; meaning it’s supported by 34 countries across Europe (both in and outside the EU). They not only provide forecasts operationally to these European countries, but produce forecasts for the entire globe, which are used for loads of different applications in many countries worldwide. ECMWF is also a research centre, with researchers exploring both technical and scientific ways to improve the skill of the weather forecasts, as well as other aspects of weather and climate science. It’s also home to two supercomputers (which are used to run ECMWF’s numerical weather prediction models, and for research), and the largest meteorological data archive in the world! If you want to know more, you can head over to their webpage.
And what did I do there? I was working in the Environmental Forecasts team, specifically as part of the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) team. EFAS provides flood forecasts to national hydrological & meteorological services and other related agencies across Europe, and there are several different centres which run different aspects of the service. ECMWF is the computing centre, running the models and the web interface, and working on new products. While I was there, I worked on a couple of different ongoing reports; for example looking at the forecast skill of the system, and I particularly enjoyed putting together the bi-monthly bulletin, which is sent out to all the users of the system around Europe. This involved writing some articles myself, and commissioning further articles, as well as info, data and graphs on flood events that had happened around Europe and the forecasts of these, from scientists at other EFAS centres. I also got to spend some time working on a new aspect of GloFAS (the global version of the flood forecasting system), which I was able to research and start putting together. It’s this forecast product / research that I’m still working on as part of my PhD, and is still in the form of a bunch of boring Python scripts – but I’m looking forward to sharing more on this soon! Last but not least, I was lucky enough to represent ECMWF on a pretty exciting ‘mission’ – which involved me taking my first trip to Asia! I’ll be writing about that trip in a few days time – it deserves it’s own post, so stay tuned…
I really enjoyed the time I took out of my PhD (even if it means my PhD will be a few months longer!) to work full-time; I learnt a lot about the European flood forecasting system, which I had used less during my PhD, and how it’s run operationally. I got to attend meetings and propose ideas as part of the team, take a great trip representing a world-renowned organisation, and perhaps most excitingly for me, I get to contribute to the forecast products available through GloFAS! Plus, having studied my undergrad in meteorology at Reading, I’ve known about and been impressed by the work ECMWF do for many years, and I remember saying back in my first year of University that I’d love to work there someday! I’d definitely recommend saying “yes” to as many new opportunities as possible (within reason!), even if they’re not directly related to your PhD/research; for me doing this has meant I’ve met some brilliant new people, discovered new research interests and directions, and ended up with a fantastic research placement during my PhD and even got to visit some far-away places!
Rebecca Emerton 