Outlook from the Intensive Course on Data Assimilation : An example of a unique academic-operational partnership on education and training

Celeste Saulo

Director of the Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences – Faculty of Sciences- University of Buenos Aires

Researcher at CIMA (UBA/CONICET)

Large global NWP centers

Model developers

NWS -Scientists focused on regional issues

Local applications

Specific developments

Weather/climate forecast systems development

Training at different levels!!!

The story

There was an idea of having a Workshop to discuss and gather two assimilation communities: 4D-Var and EnKF (born before march 2007)

There was a possibility to hold this meeting in Buenos Aires, given local support offered by the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and the Research Center for the sea and the atmosphere (CIMA)

Some colleagues at the Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (UBA), in touch with Prof. Eugenia Kalnay, considered that it would be a great opportunity to train people from the region in Data Assimilation (april 2007)

From that moment, Prof. Kalnay became the alma mater of the initiative

The intensive course on Data Assimilation

Held in Buenos Aires between October 27 and November 7, 2008, before the WWRP/THORPEX Workshop on 4D-VAR and Ensemble Kalman Filter Inter-Comparisons

Sponsored by: WMO NSF - USA The Argentine Ministry of Science and Technology The University of Buenos Aires The Research Center for the Sea and the Atmospere

(CIMA) The Argentine National Weather Service The Centro Argentino de Meteorólogos

http://4dvarenkf.cima.fcen.uba.ar/course/

The need for such a course was reflected in the fact that more than 140 applications were received, generally of well qualified students or young researchers

Of these 100 were accepted, many of them with modest but essential support from the WMO and the Argentine Ministry of Science and Technology

At least 1 participant from each South American NWSs, was fully supported

The intensive course on DA: applicants

Countries

Intensive course on DA

Argentina; 32

Brazil; 39

Bolivia; 2

Chile; 5

Colombia; 1

Ecuador; 1

México; 4

Paraguay; 1

Perú; 1

Uruguay; 2

Venezuela; 2

Non South America; 10

Argentina

Brazil

Bolivia

Chile

Colombia

Ecuador

México

Paraguay

Perú

Uruguay

Venezuela

Non South America

Institutions

Army/Navy WS; 5

NWS; 11

Research Institutes; 17

Research and Service Inst.; 24

University; 42

Private; 1

Army/Navy WS

NWS

ResearchInstitutesResearch andService Inst.University

Private

The University of Buenos Aires (Facultad de Ciencias Exactas) provided their facilities including the Aula Magna for the lectures, and two computer laboratories for the computer exercises.

We had 4 full time trainers (Kalnay, Saulo, Miyoshi and Ruiz)

We had 10 lecturers who kindly offered to participate during the second week

The intensive course on DA: organization

The intensive course on DA: contents and participants

1st week: an introduction to data assimilation, including 4D-Var and EnKF,

radiative transfer and forward observational models by (E. Kalnay, USA, Velasco, Argentina and Saulo, Argentina)

computational exercises with a Lorenz toy model (Miyoshi, Japan and Ruiz, Argentina)

2nd week: a review of data assimilation at ECMWF and JMA (Cardinali,

ECMWF and Miyoshi, Japan), objective validation (Talagrand, France), information content (Cardinali, ECMWF), data impacts (Herdies, Brazil), hybrid DA (Barker, USA), coupled ocean- atmosphere data assimilation (Yang, Taiwan), adjoint models (Talagrand, France and Hanea, Nederland), nonlinearity and Gaussianity (Snyder, USA), balance (Polavarapu, Canada), Bayesian DA and Quality Control (Lorenc, UK)

computational exercises with the Speedy model (Miyoshi, Japan and Ruiz, Argentina)

Keys for success

Prof. Kalnay enthusiasm, commitment, effort, generosity, perseverance…

The Workshop on 4D-VAR and EnKF Inter-Comparisons (following the course)

The strong need of the regional community (including operational and research components) to gain understanding of Data Assimilation and related topics

The combination of support from different Institutions (at national and international levels)

The involvement of the National Weather Service and the University of Buenos Aires

The bilingual character of the Intensive Course

The intensive course on DA: outcomes

The students were able to acquire a remarkably solid understanding of data assimilation theory and practice during the two week course.

Collaborative work started among small groups that could identify themselves as having common interests related with DA

Brazil was identified as the country leading these issues in South America. Still, it has been also noted the lack of human resources effectively trained in DA.

New tools and knowledge acquired during the DA intensive course, are now incorporated into specific courses at the University of Buenos Aires

The intensive course on DA: outcomes

Other international courses are being (or have been) organized following similar characteristics: Summer School on Land Cover Change and Hydroclimate

of the La Plata Basin 2-13 November 2009, Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná State, Brazil

(closely related with VAMOS – WCRP) Training Course on the use of seasonal predictions for

applications in Latin America (August, 2010), University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (sponsored by IAI –Interamerican Institute for Global Change Resarch-)

Endorsed by WGSIP (WGSIP panel meeting will be held just before the course, to provide experts to the course)

To organize a training session as a means to increase involvement of South American countries. The topic should be ensemble prediction with a focus on GIFS-TIGGE.

Instructors need to include examples from the Southern Hemisphere and South America prediction problems

Heavy rainfall is an area of strong interest within the region and thus the instruction should include the use of heavy rainfall prediction using ensembles.

Training also needs to include training on verification techniques for ensemble prediction.

Proposal to increase capacity building in South America, related with THORPEX program (following ideas discussed with D. Parsons)

Focused project for South America:La Plata Basin –LPB-

A proposed project is precipitation prediction for the La Plata Basin, which is formed by the discharge of waters from five countries - Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay-.

Area: 3.100.000 km2

Inhabitants: 101.656.965

Mega-cities: Sao Paulo-Buenos AiresOther large cities: Asunción-Sucre-Montevideo

La Plata Basin –LPB-

This kind of project would be of interest for VAMOS (WCRP) and for THORPEX (WWRP).

LPB is an ongoing Regional Hydroclimate Project

http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/lpb/

Most extreme 1% PFs in each category for each 2-degree latitude-longitude box (after Zipser et al, BAMS, 2006)

The project could make use of a real-time demonstration of GIFS-TIGGE, which would require real-time exchange of surface precipitation forecasts.

Data exchange rather than products are required for the bias correction of the ensembles. The project could also make use of the extensive limited area modeling expertise in Brazil and Argentina.

Efforts could be made to also link to hydrological prediction.

The planning for this project could take place in conjunction with the training workshop.

Thank you very much!!

Questions?

One day at the UBA “Aula Magna”

The lecturers