Full version of HIWeather News Letter in October 2020: 

HIWeather News Letter in October 2020

October 2020
Dear Colleagues,
The big news this month is progress in planning our HIWeather Workshop. As a fully virtual workshop, we can structure it differently from past workshops, so we have a full month of informative online seminars to bring participants up to speed on progress in the HIWeather task teams before we get to the main working sessions in December. As HIWeather is such an interdisciplinary project, the characters of the online seminars will be vary, one from another. As HIWeather is a globe-spanning activity, the time zones of the online seminars will also vary. However, all sessions will be recorded and made available after the event to those who have registered.
So please make sure you register in time for us to send you the connection details ahead of the first online seminar starting at 8pm UTC on October 26th, by sending an email with your name, affiliation and contact details to Martin Wegmann at WMO (MWegmann@wmo.int) as soon as possible. This seminar will be on Communicating about High Impact Weather, with a focus on Uncertainty, Trust & Beliefs, and will consist of four 10-minute presentations by eminent speakers followed by a panel discussion with plenty of time for audience participation.
We are still working on details of the second seminar on November 5th, currently scheduled to start at 2pm UTC, which will focus on weather impacts and the challenge of assessing impact from hazard in real time. The third seminar is joint with the 2020 International Verification Methods Workshop starting at 8pm UTC on 11th November. The fourth and fifth seminars will be on succeeding weeks at times to be decided.
These seminars are the appetisers, setting out the key questions and research in preparation for three intensive workshop days on December 1st - 3rd, each running round the clock so that all time zones have an opportunity to contribute. Each will consist of one-hour presentation/discussion sessions interspersed with one-hour break-out / working periods, so that by the end of each day we have a concrete set of outputs to share.
The first day will focus on citizen science. If you have used citizen science in any project related to forecasting and warning of natural hazards and their impacts, we want to hear your experience. Contributions will be used to develop our draft guide on the use of Citizen Science, which will be available for discussion during the session.
The second day will focus on case studies of end-to-end warning chain performance. If you have completed a report on performance of forecasts and warnings in a weather event that caused loss of life or damage, please submit an abstract to this session. We want to hear about these studies so as to build up a catalogue of evidence on the real performance of warning systems. You will be invited to provide a link to your report or published paper and to give a 10-minute introduction to the findings.
Finally the third day will look at the ingredients of the perfect warning, as we understand them today, with a particular emphasis on the role of partnerships in facilitating the communication of requirements up the chain from end-user to forecaster, and of real-time information back down the chain when a warning is issued. If you have been involved in a partnership that contributes to a warning chain, or if you have carried out research demonstrating an important ingredient that would help produce more effective warnings, we want to hear from you. All contributions will help to refine our draft book on the perfect weather warning.
If you can contribute to any of these workshop sessions, please send a brief abstract with your contact details and your preferred session and presentation time (UTC) to Martin Wegmann at WMO (MWegmann@wmo.int) as soon as possible so that we have time to schedule the talks.

Brian Golding

HIWeather Co-chair