Leeds Nowcasting Collective

Welcome to the Leeds Nowcasting Collective

We are a group based at the University of Leeds with a shared passion for nowcasting. Our group includes a range of researchers (from professors to master students) all working on a variety of nowcasting problems across the world. See some examples of our expertise below!

If you would like to find out more about us please email [email protected]

Our projects:

WISER-EWSA: aiming to help provide early warning systems (including nowcasting) to southern Africa.

TerraMaris: focused on deepening our understanding of the meteorology of the Maritime Continent.

FASTA: bringing near real-time storm information to Africa to save lives and protect livelihoods.

SWIFT: delivered a step change in African weather forecasting capability and communication, from hourly to seasonal timescales, to protect the lives and livelihoods of African people while improving the economies of their countries.

Our partnerships:

Met Office: University of Leeds is a founding member of the Met Office partnership - the UK's Met Office is a science-led organisation with research expertise in weather forecasting and climate prediction.

National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS): a world-leading research centre in the UK - advancing extreme weather, climate change, and air pollution science; and providing state-of-the-art services for observing and modelling the atmosphere - including a research aircraft, advanced ground-based observational facilities, computer modelling and support, and facilities for storing and analysing data.

Examples of our work:

Observed location of convection initiation and predicted likelihood of convection initiation 1 hour lead time

Predicting the location of convection initiation using machine learning - Joey Smith

CLICK on this image to view animation of the Rapidly Developing Thunderstorm (RDT) product applied to West Africa:

Animation showing rapidly developing thunderstorms over West Africa

- Alex Roberts