I am a Professor of Atmospheric Science. My focus is on numerical weather prediction and atmospheric boundary layers.
As director of the Geophysical Disaster Computational Fluid Dynamics Centre, I focus on making high-resolution, real-time, operational numerical weather forecasts for western Canada. My 18-member team operates a 448-processor computer cluster, optimized for studying weather-related disasters in mountainous, coastal terrain. We also run some of our weather models on cloud computers. Our pure research includes predictability (ensemble prediction, data assimilation, Kalman filtering, boundary-layer parameterizations, etc.), natural disasters (forest firestorms, flooding precipitation, cyclones, snow avalanches, windstorms, air quality, tree blowdown etc.), weather-related energy sources (wind, hydroelectric, solar, and biomass power), transportation (highways, trolley, shipping, railroads), and special projects/events (2010 Winter Olympics, Project Firestorm, rocketsonde buoy development, forecasts for the Canadian Arctic). We also do applied research for various clients (Environment Canada, Parks Canada, Dept. of National Defense, many BC Ministries, BC Hydro, Regional Districts, railroads, highways, and other agencies and industries).
Photos/posters giving an overview of our research are on the GDCFDC webpage.
My team runs 3 mesoscale numerical models daily (MM5, WRF-ARW, WRF-NMM), initialized from GFS, NAM, GEM, ARPEGE and NAVGEM data, with our horizontal grid spacing down to 0.44 km. We also run the Emergency Weather Net, which collects, archives, plots, and uses surface weather-station data from over 800 locations in and near BC every hour. To test and improve the numerical forecasts, we deploy weather instruments and conduct field research.
See our:
Some of our daily, real-time, numerical weather forecast products are available for free to the public, while many other tailored forecasts are provided to clients and sponsors.
