FT Technologies’ solid-state ultrasonic Acu-Res wind sensor has been successfully deployed on the latest Twister Fisters project, demonstrating reliable performance in some of the most extreme near-surface wind environments encountered in atmospheric research.

Twister Fisters is a team of atmospheric scientists specializing in near-storm, in-situ observations of severe convective weather. Using mobile, truck-mounted mesonet platforms, the team places instrumentation directly in the path of intense wind fields, hail cores and highly turbulent flow regimes to collect high-quality surface data for research, real-time analysis and public outreach.

Such deployments pose major challenges for meteorological instrumentation. During previous field campaigns, the team experienced repeated failures with propeller anemometers and competing ultrasonic wind sensors.

Continue reading FT Technologies’ wind sensor deployed in storm-chasing research at Meteorological Technology International.

In the wake of increasingly threatening air quality from extreme weather events such as the LA wildfires, Our Common Air is striving to mobilize attention, financing and political backing to protect global health, economies and climate. To find out more, Meteorological Technology International sits down with Christa Hasenkopf, commissioner of Our Common Air and director of the Clean Air Program at the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC) and the co-founder and former CEO of OpenAQ – an open-source platform of air quality data.

Tell us more about Our Common Air and why it was established.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Christa Hasenkopf, commissioner of Our Common Air at Meteorological Technology International.

The April 2024 issue is now available online! Packed full of news, interviews and features, including:

SPACE WEATHER : Space weather could cause chaos on Earth unless further developments in forecasting are made, with geomagnetic storms at risk of disrupting radio signals and navigation systems and even causing blackouts. Meteorological Technology International speaks to experts in the space weather sector to find out what is being done to ensure we are well prepared for such events

SUSTAINABLE OBSERVING SYSTEMS : The WMO shares its work to date on the development of more environmentally sustainable observing systems and methods for the global meteorological and hydrological sectors

IMPACT-BASED FORECASTING : Meteorological Technology International explores the continued development of impact-based forecasting, which provides the information needed to act before disasters to minimize the human and economic costs of weather and climate hazards

SPACE RADIATION : Meteorological Technology International examines NASA’s work to improve the prediction of space radiation, which is one of the greatest threats to an astronaut’s health and can cause critical damage to space-based instrumentation

CASE STUDY: TAHMO : This year the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory celebrates a decade in operation.

Continue reading In this Issue – April 2024 at Meteorological Technology International.

In 2022 Dr Sue Barrell was named Laureate of the International Meteorological Organization (IMO) Prize for her leadership in the international weather, water and climate community and for a career of commitment to the WMO. The prize (named after the WMO’s predecessor, the IMO) came four years after she officially retired from her role as chief scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) in Australia – an organization she was part of for 38 years.

Starting as a graduate meteorologist at BoM, Dr Barrell had a distinguished career spanning operational forecasting, research, science, climate, infrastructure and data policy, retiring from her final role as BoM chief scientist, with responsibility for research, international and national science relationships, innovation, STEM, diversity and inclusion, in 2018.

Continue reading INTERVIEW: Dr Sue Barrell, science leader, independent chair, director, mentor at Meteorological Technology International.

Sarah Kapnick’s first job related to meteorological applications was structuring catastrophe bonds at a bank. This required using catastrophe models to quantify expected losses from windstorms in Europe and hurricanes in the US, and using that data to develop bonds with payouts when extreme weather occurred. It was this job that inadvertently led to her successful career in the met sector and to her current position as chief scientist at NOAA.

“I was fresh out of college when I started in the catastrophe bonds role in the mid-2000s,” she explains. “I was curious about the science of the bonds and how it needed to evolve with climate change.

Continue reading INTERVIEW: Dr Sarah Kapnick, chief scientist at NOAA at Meteorological Technology International.

Sue Grimmond’s career to date has seen her installing mobile pneumatic towers in strong wind gusts in Tucson, Arizona; visiting weather stations in schools in Mexico City; installing a flux site in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; and standing on roofs in cities across the world – all as part of various fieldwork projects.

Starting out as a hydrologist with an interest in snowmelt, flooding and irrigation in New Zealand, she moved to Canada to complete an MSc and PhD before spending 17 years in the US at Indiana University and then moving to the UK for roles at King’s College London and finally at the Meteorology Department at the University of Reading in 2013.

Continue reading INTERVIEW: Prof. Sue Grimmond, professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University Of Reading, and Met Office Joint Chair at Meteorological Technology International.

Marianne Thyrring became director general of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) in 2013 after many years working in the fields of climate and the environment for the European Commission as well as various ministries in Denmark, including the Ministry of Environment. “I was always curious about the scientific and operational parts of climate and environmental policies, which is what led me to DMI,” she says.

During her earlier years at DMI, Thyrring was involved in making the organization more public-facing and making better use of the large stores of weather-related data it held. “This kind of work really fuels me,” she explains.

Continue reading INTERVIEW: Marianne Thyrring, director general of the Danish Meteorological Institute at Meteorological Technology International.

Between her time with Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, Diane Campbell has spent more than 40 years in federal public service. Her current role sees her head up the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) and serve as Canada’s permanent representative to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Over the years Campbell has gained a strong love and passion for the met industry, especially its ability at WMO-level to work collaboratively for the greater good. Fifteen years since joining MSC she still “learns something new every day” in what she believes is the “best job ever”.

Continue reading INTERVIEW: Diane Campbell, assistant deputy minister at the Meteorological Service of Canada at Meteorological Technology International.

The WMO’s first female secretary-general, Prof. Celeste Saulo, makes a call for action to the entire meteorological sector to address the unequal impact of extreme weather worldwide.

It is no secret that climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather around the world. Scientific studies indicate that events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent and more intense with human-induced climate change. Extreme daily precipitation events, for example, are projected to intensify by about 7% for each 1°C of global warming, notes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This link between climate change and extreme weather has been thoroughly documented, but what is not often addressed is that the world’s most vulnerable nations are suffering disproportionately.

Continue reading INTERVIEW: Prof. Celeste Saulo, the WMO’s first female secretary-general at Meteorological Technology International.

The meteorological sector has been using artificial intelligence (AI) for nearly half a century, according to Dr Peter Neilley, director of weather science and technologies at The Weather Company, an IBM Business. “AI is not a ‘Johnny-come-lately’ to the atmospheric sciences,” he says. “It has been ingrained in how we do our business since before the term AI was even invented.”

Neilley recalls a professor called Harry Glahn, who back in the 1970s came up with the model output statistics (MOS) system, which took numerical weather prediction (NWP) outputs and used machine learning (ML) – a subset of AI – to make the data better.

Continue reading FEATURE: How the latest advances in machine learning are enabling forecasters to make predictions in seconds at Meteorological Technology International.