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From the 14th to 17th of July I had the pleasure of attending the 7th International Scientific Conference on the Global Water and Energy Cycle in The Hague, The Netherlands. I would like to thank the GEWEX organising committee and sponsors who funded my conference expenses.

It was an interesting conference and proved to be an excellent opportunity to catch up old colleges from the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) in Sydney, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI) in Hamburg and other colleagues is various locations.

There were three highlights. Winning a poster presentation award, in which GEWEX very kindly gave me an IPad mini, the beach bluesy jazz inspired conference dinner and the espresso during the conference breaks. Never underestimate the power of coffee! I am pictured below at the conference dinner after winning the award, together with Ruth Lorenz and Annette Hirsch who are colleagues of mine from the CCRC and also prise winners.

Poster presentation award

I was rather surprised to win a poster presentation awarded. I had 4-5 interesting conversations, one of which was apparently a judge, and enjoyed talking to people about my work.

It was also an excellent opportunity to meet Dr Nicholas Klingaman who I have collaborated with previously but not met. I also met an interesting scientist from Woods Hole who wants her student to use the same technique I presented in my poster on the independent influence of large-scale drivers on precipitation.

I felt comfortable talking about the material I was presenting. Mostly because the poster was based on two papers in which the key points were already laid out. One of the papers I was working on the proof while I was at the conference and the week prior I had been working on the draft manuscript for the other paper. I was also having a busy week working on thesis corrections when I found some free time.

I hear a lot of people prepare a conversation starter for their poster. This idea stresses me out rather than comforts me as I would feel the need to stick to the script. Instead, I introduced myself, explained what I was working on and why it was important. Apparently this approach worked, as I won a student/early career researchers (ECR) presentation award. I was pleased to see other women being recognised as well, in which more than half the winners were women. Rock on ladies!

The poster was made using a latex template by Brian Amberg which I changed to suit my purpose and style. I intentionally kept the text to a minimum and tried to use simple language.

Conference dinner

The conference dinner was a lot of fun. Picture a beach, umbrellas and deck chairs outside in lovely weather on a large deck while a bluesy jazz band played and free drinks are being passed around. It paints a nice picture. It was a European style beach without any waves though people were still trying to surf. As an Australian it seems weird to me that a beach is quiet, not the usual rumble of the waves breaking, or lots of people in the surf ... people everywhere really. The dinner was a lot of fun and provided an easy way to talk to people who might in other contexts intimidate me.

Interesting talks

By far the talk that had the most impact on me was by Bjorn Stevens. I am not sure how he does it, but he has a way about him that draws you in. I have seen Bjorn talk a few times now, each time I am inspired and reminded why I chose atmospheric science to begin with. Quite frankly, it is a field with the most important questions to answer!

The advantage of watching Bjorn present is that I generally come away with a head full of new things and often with new ideas of where I can take my own research. I have been thinking about project ideas for a fellowship that I am applying for. It was fortuitous having a conference like this when I am thinking about research ideas, as it broadened by perspective a little and helped me to frame the type of question I want to answer.

Christian Jakob followed Bjorn and also gave an excellent talk. He presented a figure that was widely discussed during the conference and brought home the need to improve the representation of the atmosphere in climate models. In this figure, he presented the land and atmosphere layered as two bricks, then placed the ocean, carbon cycle, hydrology and other more sophisticated components of climate models on top. As a result, the lower layer atmosphere and land foundations began to crack. The take home message was that we are producing more and more complicated models, and yet we still have fundamental problems with the land and atmosphere.

This perspective is valuable and raises question such as: how can we expect our hydrology models to tell us about water use change if we still have difficulties in modelling precipitation? It makes you wonder how far can we push the boundaries of more sophisticated aspects of climate models when the foundations are not yet up to the challenge.

GEWEX and the WCRP Grand Challenges

The Global Energy and Water EXchange project (GEWEX) is a core project of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) focused on the dynamics and thermodynamics of the atmosphere, its interactions with the Earth's surface, and the effects on the global energy and water cycle.

WCRP has six grand challenges. The one that interests me the most is the Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity Grand Challenge. Within this grand challenge four key questions have been identified as the most important to understand. These include the following:

1. How will storm tracks change in a future climate?
2. What controls the position and strength of tropical convergence zones?
3. Is convective aggregation important for climate?
4. Does convective mixing determine the strength of cloud feedbacks?

What strikes me the most about these questions are their simplicity. As an early career scientist, who is also currently writing a proposal for a research fellowship, I fell like there is a lot of science I want to do but I feel pressure to produce elegant and complicated questions to justify why my project should be funded. I was totally humbled to see that the leading cloud and atmospheric scientists around the world have put this list together. They certainly showed me how it is done. Ask a simple question with a single aim.

The Hague

I will admit to not seeing all that much while I was in The Hague but what I did see I enjoyed. Here are a some pictures from the conference and a few extra things i found interesting.