Atmospheric Dynamics Group Meetings

A moisture droplet calculating a budget.
A moisture droplet calculating a budget.
Image courtesy of Richard Keane.

The meetings take place in a hybrid format, both on Microsoft Teams and in person, usually in 11.07. The meetings will take place on Tuesdays at 10am-11am. This is subject to change and we will email in advance if any changes are made!

Some weeks may have two speakers, in which case each person has approximately 25 minutes of discussion-based presenting time. Others have one speaker who will be expected to give a 45-minute seminar with 10 minutes for questions. (This is all quite flexible!) Email Fran Morris, Ben Maybee or Jonathan Coney if you would like to speak on a week when you are not scheduled to do so if there is an empty slot. You can speak more than once.

If you are unable to present at your scheduled time please arrange to swap with somebody and let us know the change once it is agreed.

If possible, short (25-min) presentations should facilitate discussion in the group - these shouldn't necessarily be polished powerpoints that you might present at an Internal Seminar, for example. Plots, pdfs, word documents etc are fine. If you don't have new research to present consider reviewing an interesting paper, or discussing a topic more generally, or going more in-depth about some methodology or data that you or others in the group use in their research.

Of course, if you do want to just practice an upcoming presentation, or give a full-length in-depth seminar, and get some feedback in a friendly environment - dynamics meetings are great for this too! We're just trying to avoid making every session a seminar, and allow for as much time for engagement and discussion as possible.

Meetings are held in Microsoft Teams and in person, usually in 11.07. A standing online meeting invitation will be sent out to the entire Dynamics mailing list. If you're missing an invite, contact Ben or Jonathan. In the 'Files' section you'll also find some examples of previous presentations - feel free to browse those for inspiration or to find out about some the great topics people have presented on in meetings beforehand.


Stuck for an idea? Here are some in-demand topics.


Mailing List

The University's IT department have retired the Mailman mailing list service in favour of a Microsoft product. This has resulted in the removal of some people who are not a part of the university from our mailing list. This isn't great for external people who (for example) collaborate with members of the group or supervise PhD students. The wisdom behind this decision remains unknown to us and there was very little we could do about it. If you have previously attended our meetings and have been removed from our list, and would like to get re-added, please contact us on the above email addresses and we'll see what we can do. Thanks.

Rota for 2023/2024

Date Presenter 1 Topic Presenter 2 Topic
03/10/2023 Convection Meeting 11am-12pm WCO3/Nice debrief
10/10/2023 Introductory meeting
17/10/2023 Open Discussion Dynamics public web pages John Marsham k-scale update
24/10/2023 Ashar Aslam Eddies Joey Smith Nowcasting
31/10/2023 Amethyst Vorticity Asymmetries Leading to an Eyewall Break in a Landfalling Tropical Cyclone Jonathan Lee waves in a future climate
07/11/2023 Ben M and John M Rwanda Debrief Special guest James Warner from the Met Office TBC
14/11/2023 Steef Lagrangian mixing
21/11/2023 Richard Keane IMERG Lawrence TBC
28/11/2023 Humphrey Lean 12:45-13:45 TBC
05/12/2023 Vacant TBC TBC TBC
12/12/2023 xmas-travaganza TBC
16/01/2024 NCAS engagement session! Fairbairn
23/01/2024 Jack L Model evaluation of tropical cyclone forecasts? Michael TBC
30/01/2024 Thermodynamics extravaganza: the meaning of entropy!
06/02/2024 Greg TBC Kilian TBC
13/02/2024 James B TBC Domantas TBC
20/02/2024 Dec Science
27/02/2024 Simon TTT-T + science Kasia TBC

Rota for 2022/2023

Date Presenter 1 Topic Presenter 2 Topic
25/10/2022 Introductory meeting
01/11/2022 Fran Morris Atmospheric Science Words I Did Not Understand 3 Years Ago Jonathan Coney Something very fun
08/11/2022 Amethyst Johnson Simon Peatman
15/11/2022 Richard Keane and staff Discussing Richard's CEMAC time and strategy
16/11/2022 Ruth Geen external seminar and 1:1 meetings
22/11/2022 Leo Saffin Steef Boeing
29/11/2022 Joseph Smith Alok Pandey
06/12/2022 End-of-term Dynamics Xmas-stravaganza
13/12/2022 Christmas Break
20/12/2022
27/12/2022
03/01/2023
10/01/2023
17/01/2023
24/01/2023 Summary from AGU by Leo, who I am sure attended every presentation
31/01/2023 Ben Maybee Everyone loves the MJO Ashar Aslam The summary of Ashar's Dynamical Past, Present, and Future
07/02/2023 Richard Keane It's GLOSEA5 Time
14/02/2023 Meeting cancelled
21/02/2023 Declan Finney Entropy and Potential temperature
28/02/2023 Special Guest James Warner From The Met Office TM
07/03/2023 Zhiqiang Cui
14/03/2023 Marian Osei
21/03/2023 Cathryn Birch Drivers of humid heat extremes in the tropics
28/03/2023 Michael Baidu DOUBLE BILL: 1. The Evolution of African Monsoons and its Impacts on Precipitation Seasonality in the Cenozoic and future Climate Change and 2. Prediction of Rainfall Response to the 21st-century Climate Change in Ghana using Machine Learning Empirical Statistical Downscaling
04/04/2023 Easter / EGU break
11/04/2023
18/04/2023
25/04/2023
01/05/2023 NOWCASTING SPECIAL! Double meeting 10am-12pm featuring all of our dynamics nowcasting faves (tbc)
23/05/2023 EGU Roundup from Ashar and Ben

Rota for 2021/2022

Date Presenter 1 Topic Presenter 2 Topic
14/10/2021 Introductory meeting
21/10/2021 Dynamics lunch
28/10/2021 Michael Baidu Evaluation of the Met Office 4.4km Tropical Africa Model (TAM)
04/11/2021 Dynamics LIVE Interview with Met Office scientists: James Warner, Andy Hartley, and Caroline Bain discuss model evaluation Leo Saffin Paper discussion: Narenpitak et al. (2021) - "From Sugar to Flowers: A Transition of Shallow Cumulus Organization During ATOMIC"
11/11/2021 Amethyst Johnson Diagnosing and reducing tropical cyclone noise in the MetUM
18/11/2021 Steef Boeing Some Python modules that could be useful (sometimes) Sarah Chapman Impact of climate change on heat related infant (under 5s) mortality in Africa
25/11/2021 Beth Woodhams ‘Characteristics of convective precipitation over tropical Africa in storm-resolving global simulations’ by Tobias Becker, Peter Bechtold and Irina Sandu. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.4185 Zhiqiang Cui Detrainment layer observed during the EUREC4A field campaign
02/12/2021 Simon Peatman Python surprises!
09/12/2021 Doug Parker Improving weather prediction for Africa: a call to arms
16/12/2021 End-of-term Xmas Dynamics Extravaganza
23/12/2021 Christmas Break
30/12/2021
06/01/2022
13/01/2022
20/01/2022 meeting cancelled
27/01/2022 Ben Pickering A machine learning algorithm that estimates African rainfall better* than EUMETSAT
03/02/2022 Richard Keane UM biases in Indian monsoon precipitation Ben Pickering pt ii buzz buzz here come the weather drone swarms
10/02/2022 Will Torgerson Intensity fluctuations during rapid intensification of tropical cyclones and links to eyewall replacement cycles
17/02/2022 meeting cancelled
24/02/2022 Ben Maybee MJO impact on East African rainfall
03/03/2022 Jacob Perez An intro to eddy-driven jets, and also, some research about the jet stream
10/03/2022 Neil Ward (visiting) The strong connection of midlatitude troughs to weather and climate patterns across North Africa
17/03/2022 Erik Kolstad (visiting) Climate services and prediction in East Africa
24/03/2022 Jonathan Coney Automatic detection and characterisation of gravity waves
31/03/2022 meeting cancelled
07/04/2022 Matthias Fisher (visiting) Introduction
08/04/2022 Dynamics Easter EGGstravaganza Quiz Surprise Friday edition at 3pm!
14/04/2022 Easter Break
21/04/2022
27/04/2022 Bill Boos (visiting, remote) Jet stream interactions with tropical circulations: the case of the North American monsoon Dynamics Extraordinary meeting - Wednesday 4pm (online)
05/05/2022 Post-Easter Also-Break
12/05/2022
19/05/2022
26/05/2022 EGU/AMS Tropical/Africa MAC feedback
02/06/2022 Bank holiday - no session
09/06/2022 Stanislaw Krol

Rota for 2020/2021

Date Presenter 1 Topic Presenter 2 Topic
23/10/2020 Introductory meeting
30/10/2020 Paloma Trascasa Castro Characteristics of El Niño Southern Oscillation and remote teleconnections Fran Morris Paper discussion: 'The interaction between moist convection and atmospheric circulation in the tropics'
06/11/2020 Jennifer Fletcher Paper discussion: 'Monsoons, ITCZs and the Concept of the Global Monsoon' Richard Keane An overview of ERA5 data
13/11/2020 Sam Hardy A brief overview of tropical cyclones Craig Poku From dinosaurs to weather – how mathematical modelling is a crucial part of natural sciences
20/11/2020 Ben Pickering A brief introduction to meteorological radar Lawrence Jackson The impact of time varying feedbacks on global and regional scale temperature projections
27/11/2020 Will Torgerson Intensity fluctuations in the rapid intensification of hurricane Irma Steef Boeing LES and beyond: developments in very high-resolution simulation of the atmosphere
04/12/2020 Hellen Msemo The values of weather and climate information to the Tanzania disaster risk reduction sector using non-monetary approaches Alex Roberts Deep convection visualisations using SEVIRI 10.8 BT
11/12/2020 End-of-term Xmas Dynamics Extravaganza
18/12/2020 Christmas Break
25/12/2020
01/01/2021
08/01/2021
15/01/2021
22/01/2021 Jayesh Phadtare The interaction between moist convection and orography Simon Peatman The Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) at 50
29/01/2021 Kelsey Mulder (guest) An introduction to catastrophe modelling
05/02/2021 Leif Denby Connecting convective organisation to the cloud environment in the tropical Atlantic'.
12/02/2021 Beth Woodhams A low-level intro to low-level jets Sam Clarke The Bokeh Annotation and Reporting Component (BARC) needs you! 
19/02/2021 Freya Addison  Radar Aeroecology Simulations. Peter Willets Presenting the paper: Klingaman, Nicholas P., Gill M. Martin, and Aurel Moise. "ASoP (v1. 0): A set of methods for analyzing scales of precipitation in general circulation models."
26/02/2021 Zhiqiang Cui Microphysics of warm clouds
05/03/2021 Michael Baidu Effects of vertical wind shear on Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCSs) in West Africa Leo Saffin CoMorph: “The Met Office's new convection parametrization and my limited understanding of it
12/03/2021 Fran Morris Presenting the paper: "Quantifying the circulation induced by convective clouds in kilometer-scale simulations", Annika Oertel and Sebastian Schemm Feedback on meetings/future planning
19/03/2021 End-of-term Easter Dynamics Extravaganza
26/03/2021 Easter Break
02/04/2021
09/04/2021
16/04/2021
23/04/2021 Presentation chat session
30/04/2021 Writing chat session
07/05/2021 Feeding back from EGU: A discussion of online conferences / Continuing Writing Discussion
14/05/2021 MRes Student - Earl Castro
21/05/2021 Feeding back from AMS Tropical
28/05/2021 Leo Saffin Circulation in the outflow of warm conveyor belts
04/06/2021 Fran Morris The Ultimate Organised Convection Model Tier List
11/06/2021 Doug's Maths Students
18/06/2021 Amethyst Johnson Transfer Talk Practice! Fran Morris RMetS Talk Practice!
24/06/2021 Michael Baidu RMetS Talk Practice! Group discussion Speakers for External Seminar series
02/07/2021 Jonathan Coney Transfer Talk Practice!