Research
At the University of Reading we specialise in a broad range of research areas in data assimilation. These areas span mathematical theory to applied data assimilation in the geosciences. Applications include; meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, oceanography, land surface physics, coastal sediment transport, and space.
We use a range of data assimilation methods to tackle these problems from variational data assimilation to particle filters.
Current Projects
Below is a list of the current projects we are working on, along with the group members working on the project and the funding body. Click on the links for more information.
- CUNDA: Causality Relations using nonlinear Data Assimilation: Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Manual Pulido, Magdalena Lucini, Polly Smith, Vincent Faure, Vladimir Stepanov, Matthew Ng, Maria Broadbridge (ERC Advance Investigator Grant)
- Advanced Data Assimilation Methods:
Alan O'Neill, Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Amos Lawless, Nancy Nichols, Stefano Migliorini, Ross Bannister, Mel Sandells, Zofia Stott, John Styles. (collaborations with Andrew Stuart, University of Warwick) (funded by ESA) - Observation impact and observation error covariances:
Alison Fowler, Peter Jan van Leeuwen (funded by NCEO/NERC) - Data Assimilation for the REsilient city (DARE):
Sarah Dance, EPSRC Senior Fellowship in Digital Technology for Living with Environmental Change (EPSRC EP/P002331/1),Dr David Mason, Prof Sue Grimmond , Dr Javier Garcia-Pintado(Uni BREMEN) , Dr Joanne Waller , Dr Sanita Vetra-Carvalho , Dr Jon Blower , Prof Onno Bokhove (Uni LEEDS) - Evaluation and parameterisation of individual-based models of animal populations:
Elske Van Der Vaart, Richard Sibly, Mark Beaumont, Andrew Meade, Peter Jan van Leeuwen and Nancy Nichols (funded by NERC) - Data assimilation for the brain:
Zhivko Stoyanov, Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Ingo Bojak, Doug Saddy (funded by University of Reading) - FRANC: Forecasting Rainfall exploiting new data Assimilation techniques and Novel observations of Convection (and SINATRA: Susceptibility of catchments to INTense RAinfall and flooding, TENDERLY: Towards END-to End flood forecasting and a tool for ReaL-time catchment susceptibilitY):
Sarah Dance (Lead investigator), Ross Bannister, Pete Clark, David Flack, Sue Gray, Anthony Illingworth, Stefano Migliorini, Nancy Nichols, John Nicol, Bob Plant, Rob Thompson, Jo Waller, David Livings, Ian Roulstone (Uni. Surrey), Any Oxley (Uni. Surrey), Sue Ballard (Met Office FFIR programme manager), Mike Cullen (Met Office), Tim Darlington (Met Office), Lee Hawkness-Smith (Met Office), Nawal Husnoo (Met Office), Humphrey Lean (Met Office), Dingmin Li (Met Office), David Simonin (Met Office), Jacqueline Sugier (Met Office). (Funded by NERC Flooding From Intense Rainfall Programme). - Hybrid data assimilation methods for coupled atmosphere-ocean model:
Polly Smith, Amos Lawless, Nancy Nichols, Keith Haines (funded by NERC) - Data Assimilation in moving mesh models of ice sheets and ice shelves :
Nancy Nichols, Mike Baines and Bertran Bonan (funded by NCEO) - Next generation Numerical weather prediction: 4DVar ensembles and Particle Filters:
Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Javier Amezcua Espinosa (collaboration with ECMWF) (funded by NERC) - Climate Model Initialization and Improvement using Particle Filters:
Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Philip Browne, Rowan Sutton, Ed Hawkins, Jon Robson (funded by NERC) - SANGOMA Stochastic Assimilation for the Next Generation Ocean Model Applications:
Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Sanita Vetra-Carvalho, plus EU consortium (funded by EU FP7) - Potential vorticity as a control variable in variational assimilation:
Ross Bannister, Mike Cullen (Met Office), Marek Wlasak (Met Office) (funded by NCEO) - Inverse modelling for the determination of sources and sinks of trace gases:
Ross Bannister (funded by NCEO) - Elizabeth Cooper (supervisors Sarah Dance, Nancy Nichols, Javier Garcia-Pintado and Polly Smith) Improving Flood Predictions using Data Assimilation. (funded by NERC SCENARIO DTG CASE Project with Satellite Catapul)
- Amsalework Ejigu (Supervisors Tristan Quaife, Amos Lawless and Gernot Geppert) Combining multiple streams of environmental data into a soil moisture dataset for maize-based systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Maha Kaouri (supervisors Amos Lawless, Nancy Nichols, Coralia Cartis) Novel optimization methods for data assimilation.
- Andrew Mirza (supervisors Sarah Dance, Gabriel Rooney and Sue Ballard (Met Office CASE supervisor)) Aircraft derived meteorological observations and their use in numerical weather prediction
- Flavia Rodrigues (supervisor Peter Jan van Leeuwen) Synchronisation in particle filters
- David Sursham (supervisor Peter Jan van Leeuwen, Stefano Ciavatta) Nonlinear data assimilation in biogeochemistry models
- Jemima Tabeart (supervisors Sarah Dance, Amos Lawless, Nancy Nichols, Joanne Waller, Sue Ballard ) On the treatment of correlated observation errors in data assimilation
- Mengbin Zhu (supervisor Peter Jan van Leeuwen) Optimal proposal densities in particle filters