Very nice mention of our short course in this month’s edition of Circulation (the British Hydrological Society’s magazine):
Author: Louise Slater
New paper in HESS: Science in today’s media landscape
Pleased to report that our paper,
Lutz, S., Popp, A., van Emmerik, T., Gleeson, T., Kalaugher, L., Möbius, K., Mudde, T., Walton, B., Hut, R., Savenije, H., Slater, L.J., Solcerova, A., Stoof, C., and Zink, M., Science in today’s media landscape – challenges and lessons from hydrologists and journalists.
has just been accepted in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences and can be downloaded here: https://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci-discuss.net/hess-2018-13/
New paper in GRL: statistical-dynamical forecasting of seasonal streamflow
Pleased to say that our paper has just been accepted in Geophysical Research Letters.
Slater, L.J., Villarini, G. (2018) Enhancing the predictability of seasonal streamflow with a statistical dynamical approach. doi:10.1029/2018GL077945
Key words: Seasonal forecasting, Streamflow, NMME, Precipitation, Temperature, Land cover.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018GL077945
New post (August 2018)
From 1 August 2018, I will be moving to the University of Oxford to take up a new position as Associate professor in physical geography in the School of Geography and the Environment (in association with Hertford College).
Using R in Hydrology – short course @EGU18
We’re delighted to announce that the ‘Using R in Hydrology’ workshop will be running again (for a second year) at EGU 2018!
The session is organised in cooperation with the Young Hydrologic Society (YHS) and materials will be made available on the YHS GitHub page (rhydro_EGU18).
Convener: Louise Slater
Co-Conveners: Shaun Harrigan, Claudia Vitolo, Tobias Gauster, Alexander Hurley, Guillaume Thirel.
- Introduction to the short course – Louise Slater
- Accessing hydrological data using web APIs (a demo of the rnrfa package) – Claudia Vitolo
- Extracting netCDF climate data for hydrological analyses (reading and visualising gridded data) – Louise Slater
- Processing, modelling and visualising hydrological data in R (tidyverse; piping, mapping and nesting) – Alexander Hurley
- Hydrological modelling and teaching modelling (airGR and airGRteaching) – Guillaume Thirel
- Typical hydrological tasks in R (List columns, Leaflet and coordinate transformation, Open Street Maps) – Tobias Gauster
The session is aimed at researchers who are interested in hearing more about R as well as those who are advanced R programmers wanting to discuss recent developments in an open environment.
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2018/session/28914
Seasonal Forecasting Workshop (Jan 2018)
Our two-day workshop in Loughborough on Seasonal Forecasting of Water Resources – Meeting User Needs (24-25 January) was attended by 43 participants from a diverse range of organisations (CEH, ECMWF, EA, SEPA, NRW, NCAS, National Farmers’ Union, Canal & River Trust, SMHI, Civil Protection Agency), water agencies/ consultancies (Anglian Water Services, Scottish Water, CH2M, South West Water Ltd), and universities (Maynooth, Reading, Coventry, Loughborough, Colima, Newcastle, West of England, WSL), with delegates from six countries (UK, Ireland, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden). The event was co-sponsored by the RCUK Drought Programme, Water@Loughborough, Water@Reading, and the British Hydrological Society.
We are planning to write a summary of the meeting for the British Hydrological Society’s newsletter Circulation, a Letter to NERC, and an opinion paper.
For more pictures of the event, please see the #SeasonalForecasting hashtag on Twitter!
First NERC grant (Dec 2017)
We have just heard that our NERC/ESRC/DFID proposal on ‘Financial planning for natural disasters: the case of flood risk in Central Java’ was successful.
We will soon be advertising a two-year senior Research Associate (Postdoctoral) position to work on Flood risk and Financial planning (with me), starting early in 2018. Please do get in touch if you are interested. Advanced programming (R or Python) and GIS skills strongly desirable!
Reviews (2017)
Seasonal Forecasting Workshop (January 2018)
A workshop on ‘Seasonal forecasting: Meeting User Needs’ is being held on 24th-25th January 2018 at Loughborough University (UK), co-sponsored by the British Hydrological Society, the RCUK Drought and Water Scarcity Programme, Water @ Loughborough, and Water @ Reading.
The aim of this workshop is to focus on the seasonal forecast needs of users and practitioners, and to identify ways of improving the dissemination, uptake and operationalisation of seasonal forecasts by the water and agricultural sectors.
Confirmed speakers include:
- The EFAS seasonal forecasting system (Louise Arnal, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts)
- Advancing the science behind operational seasonal forecasting: the Hydrological Outlook UK (Jamie Hannaford, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology)
- Seasonal forecasting for effective water management on the canal network (David Mould, Canal & River Trust)
- Seasonal weather forecasts and British farming (Ceris Jones, National Farmers’ Union)
- The Global Flood Awareness System (Rebecca Emerton, Water @ Reading University)
- Ensemble projections, scenarios and forecasts: operational assessment of water resources prospects (Richard Davis and Karen James, Environment Agency)
- Improving seasonal drought forecasting for user-decision making: The IMPETUS, EdGE and ENDOWS projects (Shaun Harrigan, Simon Parry, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology)
Abstract submission: Abstracts for oral and poster presentations are welcomed. Please send your abstract (up to 300 words) including title, authors and affiliations to SeasonalForecasting@lboro.ac.uk by Friday 15th December 2017.
For more information, please email: SeasonalForecasting@lboro.ac.uk
Further details/registration: https://www.ice.org.uk/events/seasonal-forecasting-meeting-user-needs
Two internal grants (Nov 2018)
Two research grants from Loughborough University, from the Institute of Advanced Studies and the SSPGS Seedcorn fund, totalling almost £5K, will enable me to purse research on the Predictability of hydrometeorological extremes using remotely-sensed data. (Thank you Loughborough!) Further details to come.
Two NERC-funded PhD positions
Two new NERC-funded PhD positions starting in 2018 are available with me and colleagues at Loughborough University, as part of the CENTA Doctoral Training Programme.
Applications for 2018 entry are now live. Further details on how to apply can be found here. Please see the links above for further details. The application deadline is 22 January 2018.
Nov 2017 talk: Oxford Water Network
Looking forward to presenting my research at the Oxford Water Network seminar series! More details here.
Seminar at Maynooth University
On October 12th, I will be giving a talk at Maynooth university on ‘Disentangling streamflow drivers and forecasting water hazards using Earth Observation’ (details here).
Two new papers in Water (MDPI) and JHE (ASCE)
Two papers accepted this month:
Slater, L.J., Villarini, G. (2017) Evaluating the drivers of seasonal streamflow rates in the U.S. Midwest, Water (MDPI). Open Access. PDF.
Villarini, G., Slater, L.J. (2017) Examination of Changes in Annual Maximum Gage Height in the Continental United States Using Quantile Regression, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (ASCE)
British Society for Geomorphology – Outreach Secretary
Delighted to have been appointed to the British Society for Geomorphology‘s Executive Committee as Outreach Secretary. 
Perspective on flood research in Science
Blöschl et al.’s published a paper on Changing climate shifts timing of European floods in Science this week (11 August 2017 issue).
Our Perspective on this paper can be downloaded here. It will be open-access the first two weeks, and then accessible via the links on this page.
New paper: Improved ENSO Forecasting using Bayesian Updating and the North American Multi Model Ensemble
Our paper has just been accepted in Journal of Climate (American Meteorological Society)!
Zhang, W., Villarini, G., Slater, L., Vecchi, G.A., Bradley, A.A. (2017), Improved ENSO Forecasting using Bayesian Updating and the North American Multi Model Ensemble (NMME), Journal of Climate
New paper: Weighting of NMME temperature and precipitation forecasts across Europe
Our paper titled ‘Weighting of NMME temperature and precipitation forecasts across Europe‘ has just been accepted in Journal of Hydrology
It is open-access here until Sept 12th!
Slater, L.J., Villarini, G., Bradley, A.A. (2017) Weighting of NMME temperature and precipitation forecasts across Europe, Journal of Hydrology,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2017.07.029
New paper: statistical dynamical forecasting of seasonal streamflow in an agricultural watershed
Our paper on dynamical statistical forecasting of seasonal streamflow has just been published in Climate Dynamics!
See the paper here and the associated EGU poster here.
Slater, L.J., Villarini, G., Bradley, A., Vecchi G. (in press) A dynamical statistical framework for seasonal streamflow forecasting in an agricultural watershed, Climate Dynamics. doi:10.1007/s00382-017-3794-7
Upcoming seminars
See here for an updated list of seminars (Hull, Maynooth, New Orleans, Durham..)
- On Monday 22nd May we are hosting a Water Research Day at Loughborough University, as part of the Water@Lboro initiative.
- On Wednesday 21st June I will be visiting the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) to talk about global statistical forecasting
- On Thursday 16th November I will be visiting Oxford to give a talk on Fluvial geomorphology and flood risk management for Oxford Water Network‘s Michaelmas term seminar series
