The Research Programme on Advancing the Frontiers of Earth System Prediction (AFESP) is a £30million 15-year investment by the University of Reading, in partnership with the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts (ECMWF), the UK Met Office and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. It will deliver sustained investments to tackle some of the far-term (10–15 year) and difficult (high-risk, high-reward) research challenges in global Earth System prediction.
By enhancing our capabilities in global data assimilation, simulation and analysis, the research programme will deliver a new class of accurate, reliable and usable forecasts, aiming to re-define the medium-range predictability limit from two to at least four weeks, enabling a wide range of new scientific and societal applications.
The research strategy comprises three scientific themes and a unifying cross-cutting theme. These have been chosen, via an open consultation process, as areas that require fundamental long-term cutting-edge research (in both physical and computational science), well suited to the skills and interests of the University, while also being of great relevance to operational centres such as (but not limited to) ECMWF.
Theme 1: Predicting the Earth System up to the sub-seasonal range.
Theme 2: Challenges and opportunities in simulating the Earth System at the kilometre-scale.
Theme 3: Data assimilation for the Earth System across a range of scales.
Cross-cutting theme: Maximising the societal benefits of extended-range numerical weather predictions.
Our ambition is to:
- Make world-leading contributions to the advancement of next-generation, extended-range weather forecasts and Earth System predictions.
- Offer a unique research and innovation hub combining meteorology, physics, mathematics and computational science, with scientists who are able to move seamlessly between fundamental and applied research.
- Research and enable new applications and services, in partnership with public and private sectors.