Newton Fund WCSSP SE Asia - Tropical Error Covariances for Data Assimilation (deadline: 12th December 2017)

The Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership Southeast Asia (WCSSP SE Asia) is seeking submission on the investigation of the dynamic, flow-dependent relationships implicit within convective-scale tropical error structures and their interactions with larger scales (e.g. Tropical Cyclones, Cold surges, etc).

This project focuses on data assimilation in the tropics with an overall aim to improve weather forecasting over Southeast Asia. 

This project aims to develop underpinning capability in modeling at the global, regional and local scale, and advance the understanding of high-impact weather events in order to support services to improve advice and mitigate the impacts of extreme weather and climate events. The specification of appropriate background error covariances is an essential component of the data assimilation process required to provide accurate analyses to initialize numerical weather prediction (NWP). Whilst significant work has been done in this area for global and mid-latitude applications, understanding of the nature of tropical forecast errors, and their modelling within data assimilation schemes, is a very new area. Numerous recent convective-scale applications of the Met Office’s Unified Model in Southeast Asia, combined with data from a mature global ensemble (MOGREPS-G) provide a wealth of training data to assess the nature of tropical forecast errors.

These grants offer £300,000 of funding to be applied between 1st April 2018 and 29th February 2020.

This opportunity is offered by the Newton Fund Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership Programme, which comprises projects designed to build the basis for strengthening the resilience of vulnerable communities to weather and climate variability, supported by the UK government's Newton Fund. Please find other opportunities offered by the programme here.

Please find further information and apply here.