ECS Annual Meeting (Jul. 2022)

The W2W Early Career Scientists met in person for the ECS annual meeting from 6-8 July 2022 in Speyer. The meeting started with a keynote talk by Maria Madsen (project A8) on characterizing optimal wintertime Atlantic-European blocking precursors. Maria gave a summary about the weather regimes and blocking events forecasts and explained the linear inversed model technique (LIM) for characterizing the dynamics of weather regimes. The meeting continued with interactive group work where the ECS from different research areas formed small groups to discuss their research topics and brainstorm on potential collaboration and new research questions. The ECS were asked to make a poster about their research idea and present it to the other participants. Lisa-Ann Kautz was the second keynote presenter and talked about atmospheric blocking and extreme events. Lisa gave an overview of blocking dynamics, a comparison of different indices, and examples of surface extreme events and blocking occurrences in a warmer climate.
On the second day, the ECS participated in the hands-on data management workshop organized by Oriol Tinto (project Z2). Oriol gave a presentation about research data management and introduced the archive tool iRODS. The ECS practiced how to archive and make a public ticket for their data repository using iRODS. To better learn the iRODS commands, the ECS took part in an escape game where they had to find the key to obtain their digital certificate. The meeting continued with a discussion on topics such as documentation and data transfer strategies and collaborations within W2W projects. Ideas that came out of this discussion will be used for future ECS activities. In the afternoon, the ECS visited the Technic Museum of Speyer. For an optional evening activity, Edward Groot gave a talk about “predictability thought experiment” and the ECS discussed their ideas and views.
On the last day, the meeting started with a showcasing session where some ECS presented and shared knowledge about useful tools. These include Flotplot, Autosubmit, Proplot, Packaging (S2S tools), and an introduction to Dask. The meeting continued with a session on enhancing graphics for publication and presentation. Examples of step-by-step figure improvements were given and the ECS then practiced within smaller groups how to improve their figures through feedback rounds. The meeting came to an end with an ECS general assembly where ideas about future meetings and workshops were discussed. 

Thank you to everyone who participated and helped to organize and make this meeting happen. It was a wonderful experience!

The program is available here.

Participants of the meeting in Speyer