ManUniCast: a real-time weather and air-quality forecasting portal and app for teaching

Schultz, David M.; Anderson, Stuart; Fairman, Jonathan G.; Lowe, Douglas; McFiggans, G.; Lee, Elsa; Seo-Zindy, Ryo

doi:10.1002/wea.2468

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 24 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The Tiedke cumulus parameterization scheme (Tiedtke 1989;Zhang et al 2011) was used on the outermost two grids only. These choices of parameterizations have been used for an operational model over Europe (ManUniCast; Schultz et al 2015) and have demonstrated reasonable success at forecasts of convection over Europe during the past five years of real-time model operation. Atmospheric initial and boundary conditions were provided from the ERA-40 reanalysis (Uppala et al 2005) land surface initialization was specified by the ERA-20C reanalysis (Poli et al 2016).…”

Section: Numerical Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hindcasting the First Tornado Forecast in Europe: 25 June 1967

Antonescu

Púčik

Schultz

2020

Weather and Forecasting

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The tornado outbreak of 24–25 June 1967 was the most damaging in the history of western Europe, producing 7 F2–F5 tornadoes, 232 injuries, and 15 fatalities across France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Following tornadoes in France on 24 June, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) issued a tornado forecast for 25 June, which became the first ever—and first verified—tornado forecast in Europe. Fifty-two years later, tornadoes are still not usually forecast by most European national meteorological services, and a pan-European counterpart to the NOAA/NWS/Storm Prediction Center (SPC) does not exist to provide convective outlook guidance; yet, tornadoes remain an extant threat. This article asks, “What would a modern-day forecast of the 24–25 June 1967 outbreak look like?” To answer this question, a model simulation of the event is used in three ways: 20-km grid-spacing output to produce a SPC-style convective outlook provided by the European Storm Forecast Experiment (ESTOFEX), 800-m grid-spacing output to analyze simulated reflectivity and surface winds in a nowcasting analog, and 800-m grid-spacing output to produce storm-total footprints of updraft helicity maxima to compare to observed tornado tracks. The model simulates a large supercell on 24 June and weaker embedded mesocyclones on 25 June forming along a stationary front, allowing the ESTOFEX outlooks to correctly identify the threat. Updraft helicity footprints indicate multiple mesocyclones on both days within 40–50 km and 3–4 h of observed tornado tracks, demonstrating the ability to hindcast a large European tornado outbreak.

show abstract

Section: Numerical Model Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hindcasting the First Tornado Forecast in Europe: 25 June 1967

Antonescu

Púčik

Schultz

2020

Weather and Forecasting

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It was only in this study that certain students expressed their interest to learn about weather forecast and to visit the weather bureau. Other scholars have attempted to create online weather and air-quality forecasting resources [22,23]. These resources, if made available to the public, could be employed for this course to facilitate the learning of weather forecasting.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Harrison et al designed a learning resource which could engage primary school students in gathering and analyzing air quality data from official air quality website [22]. Schultz et al developed a similar learning resource earlier called ManUniCast which is essentially a realtime weather and air-quality forecasting portal [23]. Gumala et al conducted a study among pre-service elementary school teachers to examine their conception of air pollution [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engaging Students in the Development of an Atmospheric Science Course: A Discourse Analysis

Tang

2021

AJESS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aims: With increasing emphasis on learners-centered approach in teaching and learning, engaging students in course development and refinement is crucial. This study aims to foster a participatory approach in course development by engaging students in meaningful discourse at the early stage of an atmospheric science course. Study design: This is a qualitative study which employed the grounded theory for data analysis. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in March 2021 in an international higher learning institution located in the Guangdong Province of China. Methodology: This qualitative study invited a year 3 cohort of environmental science students taking an atmospheric science and pollution course in an international higher learning institution in China to participate in a meaningful discourse about the course in week 2 of the semester. Their responses were transcribed and the transcripts analyzed with NVIVO based on the grounded theory. The transcripts were coded, the themes were drawn and the relationship was probed. Results: This study identified three overarching themes from the codes, namely assessment, course contents and learning activities, whose codes covered 4.5%, 17.8% and 23.1% of the text respectively. Codes for assessment comprise practical assignment and multiple-choice question, while those for course contents include black carbon, modelling, greenhouse gases, zero-carbon, and removal of Freon. Codes for learning activities include case studies, debate, field trips and quizzes. The words most frequently appeared in the transcripts are learning and field. The findings reflect expectations for interactive learning, simulation-based learning, authentic assignments and activities, experiential learning via field trips and problem-based learning. These are in line with the established pedagogies for environmental science. Conclusion: This study shifts the paradigm of students’ engagement in the increasingly learner-centered educational setting where students are proactively involved in course development in the early stage of teaching and learning instead of reactively involved through feedback collection at advanced stages.

show abstract

“…Nowadays, critically assessing model results and their value is a crucial skill of a meteorologist in view of the large data volume available in the forecasting cycle. Hence, this skill must be properly trained in our course to achieve the following educational goals for students (Schultz et al 2015):…”

Section: Model Interpretation and Model Verificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching a Weather Forecasting Class in the 2020s

Galen

Hartogensis

Benedict

et al. 2022

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report on renewing the undergraduate course about synoptic meteorology and weather forecasting at Wageningen University (The Netherlands) to meet the current-day requirements of operational forecasters. Weather strongly affects human activities through its impact on transportation, energy demand planning and personal safety, especially in the case of weather extremes. Numerical weather prediction models (NWP) have developed rapidly in recent decades, with reasonably high scores, even on the regional scale. The amount of available NWP model output has sharply increased. Hence, the role and value of the operational weather forecaster has evolved into the role of information selector, data quality manager, storyteller, and product developer for specific customers. To support this evolution, we need new academic training methods and tools at the bachelor’s level. Here, we present a renewed education strategy for our weather forecasting class, called Atmospheric Practical, including redefined learning outcomes, student activities, and assessments. In addition to teaching the interpretation of weather maps, we underline the need for 21st century skills like dealing with open data, data handling, and data analysis. These skills are taught using Jupyter Python notebooks as the leading analysis tool. Moreover, we introduce assignments about communication skills and forecast product development as we aim to benefit from the internationalization of the classroom. Finally, we share the teaching material presented in this paper for the benefit of the community.

show abstract

ManUniCast: a real-time weather and air-quality forecasting portal and app for teaching

Cited by 15 publications

References 24 publications

Hindcasting the First Tornado Forecast in Europe: 25 June 1967

Hindcasting the First Tornado Forecast in Europe: 25 June 1967

Engaging Students in the Development of an Atmospheric Science Course: A Discourse Analysis

Teaching a Weather Forecasting Class in the 2020s

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About