Author Archives: Pieter Groenemeijer

Job Vacancy

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for a researcher on modelling of severe storms

ESSL Services GmbH has a vacancy for a researcher, full-time (32 – 40 hours per week).

The researcher will be working within the Climate Research & Hazard Modelling Department with the primary task of developing methods for predicting severe weather occurrence using convection-permitting models and applying them across climate and forecasting timescales.

This task involves the combination of Additive Regression Convective Hazard Models developed at ESSL with novel datasets and their further development using machine learning techniques. Aside from this, the researcher may work in other projects that fit their expertise or areas of interest, such as radar and satellite meteorology, and teaching.

ESSL is looking for a highly motivated individual with some knowledge of severe convective storms and at least a Master’s degree in Meteorology, Physics or a related field, strong programming experience, and good English skills. Other favourable qualifications include experience with AI/ML techniques, prior work with large meteorological datasets and a track record of independent research, including peer-reviewed publications.

The ESSL team is a highly motivated and growing team that performs and supports research on severe convective storms, their prediction and their impacts globally. In addition, ESSL provides training courses to researchers and forecasters across Europe. Highlights of the ESSL include the European Severe Weather Database, the Radar & Weather Data Displayer, the ESSL Testbed, and its suite of AR-CHaMo convective hazard models. Thanks to extensive global collaborations at ESSL, the successful applicant will join a growing team that works with international research institutions and private-sector partners, seeing the real-world applicability of their research.

The salary of the successful applicant will depend on their qualifications and be broadly similar to the corresponding categories of the Austrian Science Fund (https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/funding/steps-to-your-fwf-project/further-information/personnel-costs). The employee will be based in Austria, but a large amount of teleworking can be accommodated. Employment in Austria comes with a standard health insurance and a basic pension.

The duration of the job is two years. In case of good performance and a continuing growth of ESSL in the areas of the applicant’s expertise and interest, ESSL will likely want to make the employment permanent. ESSL is interested in employing a diverse team and has a diversity and gender equality plan: https://www.essl.org/cms/essl-diversity-policy-and-gender-equality-plan

We invite interested and qualified persons to submit their CV and a cover letter to Dr Francesco Battaglioli (francesco.battaglioli@essl.org) by 31 December 2025.

Honorary member Dr. Charles A. Doswell III passed away

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We have received the sad news of the passing away of Charles A. Doswell III, or Chuck, as most will know him. A Honorary Member of ESSL, Chuck has been an extraordinary supporter of the European Severe Storms community, right from the first edition of the conference series that became the ECSS conferences in Toulouse in 2000. Chuck Doswell was a researcher who worked at several employers including the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. He did not only have a strong interest in severe weather research, but also in it resulting in quantifiable, meaningful outcomes.

He had a particular talent for reducing the complexity of severe storm forecasting to its fundamentals (lift, moisture, and instability), for which he was awarded the Nikolai Dotzek Award in 2013. He always made sure that these basics were fully understood by his audience whenever he presented them in his own special style. Chuck actively supported everyone with a genuine interest in making progress in severe weather forecasting, including the founders of ESSL and the ESTOFEX project. ESSL is extremely thankful to have enjoyed his support from consulting us on the European Severe Weather Database to teaching at the ESSL Testbeds and courses. Now, we are confident that the instability has lifted him to a place where he is now enjoying his favorite red grapy moisture.

Dr. Charles (Chuck) Doswell III
Photo from his highly recommended web site at https://www.flame.org/~cdoswell/

Prof Dr Robert Sausen has passed away

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Prof Dr Robert Sausen

The ESSL team are sad to have received the news of the passing away of Prof Dr Robert Sausen.

Robert Sausen, Deputy Director of the DLR Institute for Atmospheric Physics, has been a crucial supporter of ESSL in the years after its founding. He served as the first Chair of the ESSL Advisory Council from 2008 until 2015, supporting ESSL in countless ways. In those days, his support of ESSL, being the legacy of Nikolai Dotzek, was crucial.

We are very grateful to him and wish his wife, family, friends, former colleagues, and others close to him strength to cope with this loss.

A longer obituary can be found on the website of DLR:
https://www.dlr.de/en/pa/latest/news/2025/prof-robert-sausen

New study: More (very) large hail in most of Europe

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A new study by ESSL, Adam Mickiewicz University, NSSL, and the Freie Universität Berlin, lead-authored by ESSL researcher Francesco Battaglioli, has been published in the AMS Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

In the study, entitled “Modelled Multidecadal Trend of Lightning and (Very) Large Hail in Europe and North America (1950-2021)” they reconstructed the climatology of lightning and (very) large hail in Europe and North America since 1950 using statistical models (AR-CHaMo) trained with about 24 million lightning observations and more than 44000 hail reports.

Left: Mean modeled annual and seasonal number of hours with hail of 5 cm or larger in a 0.25 x 0.25° box.
Right: Change in the annual number of hours with very large hail per decade. Significant trends (p<0.05) are hatched.

They found that, across Europe, large (≥ 2 cm) and very large (≥ 5 cm) hail is most common across northern Italy, south-western France, and eastern Spain. Hail frequency has increased across large parts of Europe. This increase is caused by rising humidity in the lowest layers of the atmosphere.


Left: Mean modeled annual and seasonal number of hours with hail in a 0.25 x 0.25° box.
Right: Change in the annual number of hours with hail per decade. Significant trends (p<0.05) are hatched.

In North America, hail is most common across the U.S. Great Plains. Unlike Europe, the modelled hail frequency has only increased in certain areas, while it decreased in others. Areas with increasing hail include the High Plains of Colorado and Central Canada.

Modelled time series of hail across Northern Italy and Central Oklahoma.

Focusing on two hail-prone areas, northern Italy and central Oklahoma, temporal changes in large hail frequency can be shown using “Hail Stripes”, much like those used to illustrate temperature changes, first by Ed Hawkins. These stripes show that, across northern Italy, very large hail is now 3 times more likely than it was in the 1950s.


Modeled seasonal cycles of large and very large hail for three different periods (1950–73,
1974–97, 1998–2021).

Since 1950, the season in which large hail occurs has lengthened across Northern Italy, especially because of an earlier start in Spring.     

Experimental lightning and hail forecasts, with hail observations overlaid,
based on AR-CHaMo, available at https://stormforecast.eu

The AR-CHaMo models also have important applications in hail forecasting and are used for experimental real-time forecasts available at the website stormforecast.eu. The so-called Convective Available Potential Energy, a parameter often used by forecasters, was shown to be of limited value. Instead, the part of this potential energy released high in the storm cloud at temperatures below -10 °C was found to be a much better predictor for large hail.

This work was funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF) within the project CHECC, part of the ClimXtreme Research Programme. Stormforecast.eu has been developed in the Project PreCAST supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

ESSL welcomes Météo-France as a new Full Institutional Member

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In June 2023, Méteo-France has become a member of the European Severe Storms Laboratory. This means that they have joined the present 25 Institutional Members of ESSL: public or non-profit organizations in Europe active in the realm of weather and climate forecasting or related fields. The ESSL Team extends a warm welcome to Météo-France, which will now have full access to the European Severe Weather Database to support its activities. In addition, full ESSL members have a vote in ESSL’s General Assembly and benefit from reduced participation rates in ESSL activities. ESSL is looking forward to the cooperation with Météo-France.

Online mini-ECSS 2022

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The European Severe Storms Laboratory calls for contributions to the mini-European Conference on Severe Storms (mini ECSS) to be held on 27 and 28 September 2022 via the online conferencing tool BlueJeans.

The pandemic situation over the past years has led to the postponement of the European Severe Storms Conference for spring 2023.

The mini ECSS, a prequel to the ECSS 2023 (Bucharest, Romania), offers an opportunity for PhD students and early-career scientists to present their latest research. This event is structured such that, for each day, there will be 10 presentations (each 15 min long) in the morning followed by 2 invited lectures (each 40 min long) in the afternoon.

Register here for the event or to submit an abstract for presentation.
Those who submit an abstract are asked to provide us with a short biography.

New ESSL–EUMETSAT partnership on using next-generation satellite data in severe convective storm forecasting

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ESSL is delighted to announce that it has entered into a contract with EUMETSAT for three years to train forecasters of the national (hydro-)meteorological services of its member states. The training focuses on the use of products from the next-generation satellite missions Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and EUMETSAT Polar System–Second Generation (EPS-SG) for the analysis and nowcasting of severe convective storms.

EUMETSAT and ESSL have started this contract on 1 June 2021 that is intended to pave the way for longer-term collaboration in support of the European meteorological community.

ESSL will organize training testbeds for operational forecasters of Europe’s weather services, introducing proxy, and later real, data from EUMETSAT’s next-generation missions with a focus on severe convective storm forecasting. The aim is to totally train about 10–15% of the operational meteorological workforce in European weather services, or about 200–300 forecasters.

The testbeds will mainly be organized at ESSL’s Research and Training Centre in Wiener Neustadt (Austria), but can also be hosted by weather services with suitable facilities upon their request. Optionally, testbeds can be held online as well.

Besides the testbeds, expert workshops will be organized for a small number of people that include senior forecasters, product experts, senior trainers, science-to-operations staff, and experts from EUMETSAT. The aim of these workshops is to better understand novel capabilities for severe storm analysis and prediction, such as with the new 0.9 mm and 2.25 mm bands, the Lightning Imager, and the Infrared Sounder, and to develop training concepts and material. The first such workshop will be planned during the first months of 2022.

Job vacancy: Researcher (closed)

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Click here for a printer-friendly pdf document.

The European Severe Storms Laboratory (ESSL, https://essl.org) is looking for a

Researcher (75 – 100 %)
for two years initially

based in Germany, to support its work in the research project CHECC on severe thunderstorms and climate change (see below) at 75% of a full position.

Optionally, other tasks involving programming work in support of the ESSL Testbeds may be taken over. In this case, the researcher can be hired full-time. We are looking for someone who can start in the coming months, or at the latest by September 2021.

CHECC

We are looking for support of the project “Convective Hazard Evolution under Climate Change” (CHECC, see: https://www.essl.org/cms/checc/), part of the German research programme ClimXtreme (see:  https://www.climxtreme.net/) which includes several research groups at various universities. The primary goal of CHECC is to find out if effects of climate change on the occurrence of (severe) thunderstorms in Europe can be detected in reanalyses and climate models. This is done by developing and applying statistical methods with a strong basis in physics. Tasks of the researcher will include:

  • Evaluating the role of changes in synoptic scale weather patterns on severe thunderstorm probability
  • Evaluating changes in the variability of weather conditions supportive of severe thunderstorms
  • Reporting on the research in peer-reviewed scientific journals

ESSL Testbed

The ESSL Testbed is a collection of one-week events, which (in non-corona times) takes place in person at ESSL premises in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. There, forecasters and developers work together to evaluate novel products developed to support the forecasting and warning process. They do this by using these products based on satellite, radar, and numerical weather prediction data to make forecasts in a quasi-operational setting. ESSL seeks someone to help develop and maintain the ESSL Weather Data Displayer, which is an interactive web page for displaying meteorological data.

Profile

The employee needs to be a resident in or moving to Germany as this is a prerequisite by the funder of the CHECC project. The current ESSL team is spread across many European countries including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Romania, and Croatia and often works remotely. The employee do their work through teleworking from Germany. In collaboration with the Institute of Meteorology of the Freie Universität Berlin, we offer a workplace at the Institute, which is the location of the other current ESSL CHECC researcher. It is expected that the new employee will coordinate with him and with other ESSL colleagues in weekly video meetings and will meet in person approximately every two to three months, in Berlin, Wiener Neustadt, or another agreed location. In case work in support of the ESSL Testbed is done, it is expected that the employee will take part in person in the Testbed in Wiener Neustadt for at least one week in June and/or July.

ESSL offers this position for a two-year period, limited by the duration of the funding for the CHECC project. Provided that subsequent funding is found, the employment may be continued beyond the two-year period, and could be made permanent. As a researcher at ESSL, you will be part of a small international team of ESSL which has become an important centre of competence in Europe with regard to severe convection. You will be able to contribute to the various other activities carried out and take part in ESSL courses taught by experts in the field.

We are looking for a person who has a Master or Ph.D. degree or equivalent in meteorology, physics, or a related discipline, who is enthusiastic about severe weather research. A well-organized, reliable, and communicative character is expected. For graduates of a Master’s degree, the work done for the CHECC project can be part of a Ph.D. degree (dr. rer. nat.) pursued at the Freie Universität Berlin or another university.

We require:

  • Good command of the English language in speaking and writing
  • An M.Sc. or Ph.D. degree in physics, meteorology, geophysics, mathematics or similar
  • An interest in (severe) convective storms
  • Experience with programming using languages such as Python, R, or similar

Beneficial, but not essential, are:

  • Having published in peer-reviewed literature
  • Having done prior research work related to atmospheric circulation patterns
  • Knowledge of the German language or willingness to learn German
  • Some knowledge of web-programming (HTML, PHP, JavaScript)
  • An interest in weather forecasting

The salary level is oriented at the German TvöD salary table, level E 13. In case the employee with carry out the research work (at 75%), an indicative net salary is around € 2000/month, depending on the applicable tax class according to German law and other factors.  In case the employee will also contribute to the Testbed and work full time (100%), an indicative net salary is € 2500/month.

With reference to ESSL’s diversity policy, we especially encourage women and minorities to apply. We are looking forward to receiving your application including a motivation letter and a curriculum vitae until February 28th 2021 by e-mail to Pieter Groenemeijer: pieter.groenemeijer@essl.org.

UPDATE – ESSL events in 2020 online

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ESSL has decided to carry out all its events in 2020 online. We have collected experience with organizing such events and have received mostly positive feedback. That being said, we aim to organize event on site in Wiener Neustadt in 2021 as soon as the virus situation allows it. We are looking forward to welcoming participants personally to our expanded facilities.