AMOS Sydney Centre Seminar

April 15, 2008

Guergana Guerova, Centre for Atmospheric Chemistry, University of Wollongong

"Application of GPS derived water vapour for Numerical Weather"

ABSTRACT:

Application of the GPS derived water vapour into the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models was the focus of the COST Action 716 ”Exploitation of ground-based GPS for operational numerical weather prediction and climate applications”. For this purpose, GPS water vapour data covering Europe were collected within the Near -Real Time demonstration project and provided for Observing System Experiments (OSE). This presentation will cover the Swiss contribution to COST 716 using the operational NWP system of MeteoSwiss the aLpine Model (aLMo). ALMo is a limited area nonhydrostatic model with a horizontal resolution of 7 km, 45 layers in the vertical, and a data assimilation based on the Newtonian relaxation (nudging) method. In total, 100 GPS sites were assimilated in aLMo for selected periods in autumn 2001 and summer 2002. The results from those experiments will be presented. In addition, the use of GPS derived water vapour for long term model validation will be outlined and a number of case studies, including the 2003 European heatwave, will be discussed.

WHEN/WHERE:

Tuesday 15th April, 6:00PM. University of New South Wales, Old Main Building (K15), room 64

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Guergana completed her PhD in 2003 in Applied Physics at the University of Bern, Switzerland on application of GPS derived water vapour in the mesoscale Numerical Weather Prediction model - aLMo. This work was the Swiss contribution to the European Project "Exploitation of ground based GPS for climate and numerical weather prediction application".  In the period 2004-2006 she worked as a post doctoral research fellow, at the Laboratoire de Modélisation de la Chimie Atmosphérique, Lausanne, Switzerland, using the Global Chemistry and Transport Model GEOS-Chem to conduct research on two projects: 1) long range pollution transport between North America and Europe and 2) photochemical smog formation during the 2003 European heat wave.

Since joining the Center for Atmospheric Chemistry at University of Wollongong in March 2006, Guergana has actively pursued new modeling research activities associated with emission and transport of tropospheric traces gases and aerosols during the 2003 Canberra bushfire.