Full version to download:

Newsletter in Oct 2019:HIWeather Newsletter Oct 2019.pdf

Citizen Science Project Concept notes: HIWeather Citizen Science Project Concept Paper_v1.3.pdf

Oct 2019

The HIWeather Steering Group (SG) gathered for its annual meeting in Geneva in the third week of October. There was feedback from the WWRP Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) to consider as well as new ideas from the task teams. In response to critical input from the SSC, the SG identified three cross-cutting projects to take forward. These build on previous work in HIWeather, but are bigger and altogether more ambitious. The first is the book proposal, which has been under preparation for a while and will be submitted shortly. The second was a major initiative in citizen science, described more fully below by David Johnston. The third is to build on the warning case study initiative with a more substantial study of reviews of end-to-end warning systems and how they have performed in critical severe weather events. A concept for this study will be generated by the end of the year.

Also in October, I was able to go to the conference on  "Extreme Events - Building Climate Resilient Societies", organised by the Herrenhausen Foundation in Hannover, Germany. One of the topics for discussion was Compound Risk, something that HIWeather has touched on in our impact cascades. One of the contributors was Gordon Woo, who described a “parlour game” that he plays with fellow Catastrophe modellers, to find what he calls “downward counterfactuals”. The game starts with a historical disaster and proceeds by each player identifying a factor that could reasonably have been worse, and proceeds until the worst, reasonably plausible, scenario is reached.

Looking ahead, I shall be talking compound risk again at the end of November as I have been invited to a meeting of the DAMOCLES COST action on that subject in Tallinn. Following that, Qinghong Zhang and I will be in San Francisco in early December for the AGU. I am participating in the Risk-KAN Town Hall on multi-hazard and complex risk, and also presenting in a session on partnership in warnings. Then I hope to catch up with many North American colleagues in January at the AMS Annual Meeting.

With all good wishes,

HIWeather Co-chair