Why did I become a scientist?

This is a question I love to ask other people – I love to find out why they first embarked on their career, or project, or why they chose a specific degree, etc. Some people have a story you can tell they love to talk about, and some people I’ve asked have kind of just

PhD Update: 3 months to go!

Wait… but it hasn’t been 3 months since your “6-months-to-go” update?! No, it’s only been 2 months (and it feels like it’s only been about 2 weeks!). I promise I can count! It turns out that the “what’s next?” part of my plan has changed a little, and so I need to submit my thesis

How can we forecast river flow around the globe, months in advance?

My PhD research looks into how we can provide earlier indications of flood hazard at the global scale. One way of doing this is through seasonal forecasts of high (or low) river flow. Seasonal forecasts are designed to provide an early indication that a given variable, such as temperature, rainfall or even river flow, will

Pint of Science 2018 – Flooding: Is it all water under the bridge?

Pint of Science is all about taking science outside of the “lab” (or field, or office!) and bringing researchers into local pubs to present their science to people who wouldn’t normally get to hear about and discuss it. I first heard about Pint of Science last year through twitter and was keen to get involved

#SciComm at EGU 2018

Last month, I attended the European Geosciences Union annual conference in Vienna. I wrote about my experience chairing a session and presenting a PICO on my research in a recent post, but this year, I also attended more science communication events and sessions than I had in previous years – so I wanted to mention some of my #scicomm highlights from this year’s EGU!

My experience at EGU 2018: chairing a session & presenting a PICO

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) has one of the largest scientific conferences in the world, held every year in Vienna. Last week, 15,075 scientists from 106 different countries made their way to the Austria Center for more than 17,000 talks, posters and PICO presentations over 666 sessions. I’ve previously seen the Austria Centre likened to

The Butterfly Effect: Chaos & Ensemble Forecasting

The Butterfly Effect is a well-known concept; the idea that a butterfly flapping it’s wings on one side of the world, could cause a hurricane on the other. But is this really possible? The question was first posed a little differently, in the title of a talk given in 1972 by Edward Lorenz, a professor

Can we really use El Niño to predict flooding? & 5 Things I learnt writing a Nature paper.

This question is the one that my PhD research, and my most recent paper, aim to address – looking at the links between El Niño and river flow to see if we can use it to provide earlier flood warnings. But the question I’ve been asked a fair few times over the past year in

Melbourne and “Breaking the Barriers”

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that outside of my research, travel is also a big part of my life, and I jump at the chance to explore a new corner of the world! So I not only flew out to Australia for the conference, but afterwards I hired a car with my partner in crime and we took ourselves on a 2-week road trip around Victoria. So in this post, I’ll talk a bit about the HEPEX conference and the week I spent in Melbourne, and you’ll see a couple of travel posts pop up soon as I write about our time exploring the land down under!

Have you ever heard of a yottabyte? Big Data & Its Challenges

Recently, I was a mentor on the online FutureLearn course “Big Data and the Environment”, run by the Institute of Environmental Analytics. While “big data” can be a little vague as a description, the data I work with on a daily basis comes under this classification, and working with it has been one of the biggest challenges of my PhD. My role on this course was to peruse the discussion boards and join in with discussions / answer questions related to the content. I found the course really interesting myself, and thought I’d write a bit about Big Data and some of its challenges, including ones I’ve encountered myself.