Debriefing of the ALATNET Seminar on High Resolution Modelling

Acknowledgments :

• The support of the TMR/IHP Programme of the European Community was underlined : it gave CHMI the funding to organize the Seminar and allowed more than 20% of the participants to attend this Seminar.
• Thanks to the Local Organization Committee (with special thanks to Helena VONDRACKOVA), the 2 week seminar went on very well for the 57 people attending it.
• The audience was multi-European, with participants from 15 countries both inside the European Union and outside, both inside ALADIN and outside, with an important percentage of women. See statistics of the Seminar for more details.

About the programme :

• The programme was considered well balanced between the different topics. The volume of the lectures appeared well adapted to the topics and the duration of the Seminar.
• The participants were asked if they had missed a link with practical modelling : the danger was to disappoint either people who like to go far into equations or those who prefer to go closer to the practice. From this point of vue, the lectures proved to be a good compromise, theoretical enough and not too close to the ALADIN equations. The need of a bibliography for each lecture was expressed. This is now done (bibliography available on web) but people would have prefered to have at least one copy of all references available during the Seminar, somewhere to be photocopied.
• The lack of Data Assimilation part was raised; this old decision had two main reasons : up to now, only a few countries were really involved in data assimilation at high resolution with ALADIN thus this subject was judged less universal if not less important; moreover, with a data assimilation lectures, the duration of the Seminar should have been increased with all potential problems created by a 3 week absence of work and home. However, the Digital Filter Initialization should have been introduced in the programme of the Seminar.
  The idea of organizing another Seminar dedicated to Data Assimilation was thus thrown out.
• The lectures prepared in 7 countries by 10 teachers were judged homogeneous with good connections between one another. However, the main criticism expressed was both the lack of a Numerical Weather Prediction overview after the dynamical meteorology notions and the lack of a compact overview of perspectives of high resolution modelling. The corresponding informations were underlying among all the lectures but should have been summarised in special lectures at the beginning and at the end of the Seminar.

About the organisation of the Seminar :

• The duration of the Seminar, the length of the lectures, the number of lecture per day and the organization of the day (break in the afternoon) were considered as good by the participants (the proposed organization proved to be good although both some organizers and students were a bit sceptical at the beginning).
• The topics were intermixed during the two weeks : it prevented some participants to be interested only during a few days and it was comfortable for teachers. This sharing was welcome by most of the participants.

To conclude, a few sentences noted during the debriefing :

from teachers or organizers point of vue :

• "I was really surprised that it works"
• "it was better than we expected"
• "very good spirit in attention, suggestion for tutorial, interesting discussions outside hours"
• "it was a bit hard to organize but a pleasure to give"

from students :

• "after this Seminar, I get the impression that blacks boxes (in the model) are now grey boxes : it is not so complicated or, if complicated, with some efforts, it will be possible to understand; things start to fall together"
• "we should have done earlier"
• "thanks to the teachers"
• "we were shocked but not surprised by the programme"
• "the training was a great success"
• "Radostovice : a NWP paradise"

from participants outside ALADIN countries :

• interesting opportunity to get a different approach to a numerical model
• presentations were interesting for people outside ALADIN thanks to the presentations not too model specific

generaly speaking :

• "very good mood"
• "friendliness of the atmosphere"