EGU 2017: Final day

It’s over. Five days of interesting talks, posters and discussions are finally done and the EGU 2017 has reached its end. The final day was for me the only one where I had some contributions on my own and so it was a busy one.

The disadvantage of having two posters at the same time #EGU17 pic.twitter.com/703vnhkvRX

— A. Düsterhus (@aduesterhus) April 28, 2017

After I have hung up my posters (yes, I had two to cover today), I went to a palaeo-session and listened to many talks about ice sheet modelling and data collection in Antarctica. After lunch I had the session in which I had to give my talk on the seasonal prediction of the SNAO.

Time to kill on the last afternoon? Come to my talk on seasonal prediction of SNAO in Room 0.14. #EGU17 pic.twitter.com/E8LEamhP5Y

— A. Düsterhus (@aduesterhus) April 28, 2017

The session lasted two slots long and the final talk on the supermodel reminded me of the SIRF I applied in my last paper. Interesting to see it applied to a full-scale model. Finally the day ended with the poster session, but this time I had my two posters and a lot of talking to do (and yeah, EGU finally retweeted a tweet of mine ;)).

#EGU17 not over yet, one poster session still to go pic.twitter.com/iPYnX1NIdd

— A. Düsterhus (@aduesterhus) April 28, 2017

So all in all it was a great conference. I enjoyed Vienna once again, met many interesting people and saw so many interesting talks and poster that I look forward to the next time. The hottest topic in my view was the warning of the observationalist that there is really a problem building up in Antarctica. I saw two medal lectures on this topic and the claim that models currently underestimate the potential sea level rise are quite worrisome. The thing I was not so happy about was the provisional building in front of the main building as it covered the meeting place and changed the atmosphere of the breaks. But to answer the question of my first post from this years EGU, it seemed as the resources for beers and wine for the poster sessions were alright, as the complaints were relatively quite during the days. At the end it is time for me to say goodbye from Vienna (I will do that with another day here) and taking all the new ideas home and hopefully having the time and opportunity to make something out of them.

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Dames 2016: Conference report

Last week the conference on Data Analysis and Modeling in Earth Sciences took place just around the corner in Hamburg. As one of the smaller conferences it stretched over three days. Each day was divided into two parts: in the morning three keynote speakers had 45 Minutes to give a broad overview on their topics, while in the afternoon the talks lasted 30 Minutes.

The talks covered topics from Nonlinear Time Series Analysis to Big Data and few were on the applied side. Some went really deep into the theoretical background, which was good to make the long talking times interesting, and so were consequently quite mathematical. A main theme was also statistical parametrisations, a topic, which is often not so high on the agenda on the conferences I visited in the past. And as always, extremes were on the topics list, as it is currently one of the main themes on which people focus their research. A poster session on the first evening, conference dinner on the second and coffee and lunch breaks animated further conversations.

All in all it was an interesting conference. Having mathematicians beside those on the applied side, was a nice change to the usual separation. Of course it makes it sometimes hard to follow long talks, when they go into many details, but it was an interesting experience. The usual international 12 + 3 talks are tiring as well, but more due to the fast change of topics and the necessity to think into new talks avery quarte rof an hour. Longer formats give you the feeling, more like a lecture during your studies, that you understand more of the presented content. As such I liked it, but of course it just works when the number of participants is low. Myself had a poster in the poster session and it was the first time that I presented my current main work on the NAO. As such it was an important step towards the first publication to it, which I hope to submit until the end of the year.

UK Sea Level Science Meeting

At the end of last week the NOC in Liverpool invited the UK communities around sea level science to a meeting to honour Phil Woodworth’s retirement. After the 80th-birthday of the PSMSL two years ago, this was the second time in quick succession to get the people together and discuss the current developments in the field. Sea level itself is a highly diverse topic, which was well represented at that meeting.

The stage is set for #UKSeaLevelScienceMeeting2015 pic.twitter.com/a6ojNHyBeI

— A. Düsterhus (@aduesterhus) March 12, 2015

It started with some talks on the impact of sea level change and storm surges. A focus therein was the translation of the science to the actions on the ground. After the first poster session the past sea-level, especially during the Holocene got their attention. In this part the connection between geodesy, geology and oceanography gives the field a very interesting interdisciplinary touch. All communities have to work together and understand each other to gain further ground in the research on this topic. A big point is therein the uncertainty of models and observations, which was widely presented and discussed in the talks and the posters.

My poster at the meeting

The presentations ended with an overview over the observational techniques, mainly coastal measurements with the satellites. In these fields large steps forward were made in the past years, which brings hope to the development of better opportunities to compare satellite measurements with the readings of tide gauges. Some remarks from the host and a nice conference dinner with many discussions lead to the end the first day.

The second day kicked of with the main source of sea level change, the ice. The focus was especially set on the ice sheets on Antarctica and their monitoring with satellite altimetry. Ocean dynamics and their influence on sea level followed next. The speakers showed that the influence of this part has still many potentials for future research. The final topic was the projections of future sea level change. This controversial topic with its two main approaches, the classical modeling and the semi-empirical methods, lead to many discussions.

All in all it was a great meeting, which brought a good overview on the many different facets of the field. The great discussions around the meeting helped to broaden the understanding for everyone within this interdisciplinary community. Certainly the field will still allow for huge advances in the future, which will require the introduction of new techniques, great ideas and especially the work across the traditional boarders of the research fields.

AGU 2014 – My talk

Today the highlight was to show my own work to the audience. So I presented some work on the sea-level oscillations during the LIG and the main result that the data I have is inconclusive on this topic. Yes, such results are not great and I always have hoped for a different outcome when I submitted my abstract, but science does not work like a wish list. Nevertheless, I personally think it is important to show the problems within the work and the possible ways to solve them, even when these solutions are not in your own control. I will work further on this and some similar questions and will hope to submit a paper on this in the next couple of months.

The second session was about atmospheric reanalysis data and their intercomparision. I very much liked it as it is well-connected to my former work and the developments there are always of interest. Seeing the developments and the new products in production make me hopeful that the next generation of atmospheric reanalysis will be even better. After lunch a very interesting poster session, attached to the session of my talk, occupied me for a long time. Many great poster, a lot of great science and definitely a field which is moving forward in large steps. And yes, it was also the session for the poster, which has my name as a co-author. And it was great to show that tiny differences can lead to large changes.

Apart from that, many meetings during and at the end of the day made the day a very good one. It was certainly the most productive one for receiving feedback and organising work for the next couple of months. After this highlights, the next two days will be again filled with interesting talks. So bring it on.

AGU 2014 – My contributions

The end of the year has arrived and the last conference in it will be for me the AGU 2014 in San Francisco. My contributions are fucussed on one presentation on Wednesday morning at the Session “PP31F – Sea Level, Ice Sheets, and High-Latitude Climates during Previous Warm Periods I”. My talk will give some insight on the problematics around the determination of sea-level variability during the Last Interglacial.