Current Post: Senior Lecturer and WeatherQuest Innovations Director

Room Number: 3.11

Telephone: 01603 592533 (+44 1603 592533)

Fax: 01603 591327  (+44 1603 591327)

Email: s.dorling@uea.ac.uk

Publications: EPrints Digital Repository

Posts of Special Responsibility:

• Director of Engagement

Research Interests

Agricultural-, Energy- and Insurance-Meteorology/Climatology (Food, Water and Energy Security). Numerical Weather Prediction; Regional Climate Modelling; Remote Sensing; Air Pollution Meteorology at Meso/Synoptic scales. Artificial intelligence methods in the environmental sciences.


Biography

I am a Chartered Meteorologist (http://www.rmets.org/activities/cmet/index.php) with many interests in how weather and climate interface with environmental problems.

My main current research activities address science which tackles the major over-lapping security challenges facing the world in food, water and energy. I am working with Norwich Research Park colleagues at the John Innes Centre (JIC) to better understand the effect of current weather and climate on disease resistance in wheat and on flowering in brassica, to help identify genetic traits which will be needed in the future to respond to anticipated climate change. This work is funded by BBSRC and the Defra Hort-Link programme. These interests have developed through the research agenda of the “Environmental Life Systems Alliance” (ELSA), the JIC-UEA strategic collaboration (www.elsa.ac.uk), expanding my earlier agriculture-related work in which we studied the potential of satellite remote sensing as a possible operational source of real-time soil moisture conditions in the field. In the energy and risk fields, my group is also active in quantifying, diagnosing the causes of and studying impacts related to recent trends in windspeed in North-west Europe, a topic of interest, but from contrasting perspectives, to both the insurance and wind energy sectors – this work has been funded by the Worshipful Company of Insurers and NERC. Key tools which underpin the work of my research group include numerical weather prediction models (such as WRF, the Unified Model and ensemble prediction systems through TIGGE), the Met Office’s Regional Climate Model (PRECIS) and long-term observational records of surface weather. My group has used PRECIS to dynamically downscale global climate model output to produce high-resolution climatologies for both current and possible future climate in NW Europe and in SE Asia. The Defra-funded River Wensum Demonstration Test Catchment (DTC) and NERC-funded Valuing Nature Network (VNN) programme are developing into equally significant research platforms which my research is interfacing with.

Earlier in my research career I was very active in studying the impact which weather has on air quality and this work helped to highlight the way in which variations in weather can confound our interpretation of the effects of air pollution emission reductions. The work of my research group considered how changes in climate may affect local air pollution problems, both now and in the future as a result of climate change. Much of this work informed recent reports, in support of policymaking, published by the Defra Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG) to which I strongly contributed. I coordinated the EU Framework V project 'APPETISE' which developed and inter-compared statistical and artificial intelligence techniques applied to air quality modelling. I continue to work closely with the UEA ‘Weybourne Atmospheric Observatory’ research group (http://weybourne.webapp1.uea.ac.uk/), studying the interactions between atmospheric chemistry and local/meso-scale meteorology.

In 2001, I co-founded a short-range weather forecast company, WeatherQuest (www.weatherquest.co.uk), which is based at UEA. Over the last decade I have been WeatherQuest’s ‘Innovations Director’, tasked with using the company’s presence in ENV to enhance the student experience and with the design of new services and the related underpinning research and development (especially in agriculture-, insurance- and wind power meteorology). Weatherquest’s work in the print and broadcast media lead to extensive community-facing engagement activity; I received a Cue-East Engagement Award in 2011. I also established ENV’s thriving undergraduate year in industry placement programme, enhancing the profile of ‘employability’ amongst the student community and building enterprise links with placement providers.


Significant Publications

• Hewston, R. and Dorling, S.R. (2011) An analysis of observed daily maximum wind gusts in the UK. Journal of Wind Engineering and Industrial Aerodynamics 99, 845-856. doi. 10.1016/j.jweia.2011.06.004
• Kong, X., Dorling, S.R. and Smith, R. (2011) Soil moisture modelling and validation at an agricultural site in Norfolk using the Met Office Surface Exchange Scheme (MOSES). Meteorological Applications 18(1), 18-27. doi. 10.1002/met.197.
• AQEG (2009) Ozone in the United Kingdom. Defra. London.
• Kong, X. and Dorling, S.R. (2008) Near surface soil moisture retrieval from ASAR wide swath imagery using a principal component analysis. International Journal of Remote Sensing 29(10), 2925-2942. doi. 10.1080/01431160701442088.
• AQEG (2007) Climate Change and Air Quality. Defra, London.
• Dorling, S.R., Foxall, R.J., Mandic, D.P. and Cawley, G.C. (2003) Maximum likelihood cost functions for neural network models of air quality data. Atmospheric Environment, 37, doi. 10.1016/S1352-2310(03)00323-6.
• Kukkonen, J., Dorling, S.R. et al (2003) Extensive evaluation of neural network models for the prediction of NO2 and PM10 concentrations, compared with a deterministic modelling system and measurements in central Helsinki. Atmospheric Environment, 37, doi. 10.1016/S1352-2310(03)00583-1.
• Gardner, M.W. and Dorling, S.R. (2001) Artificial neural network derived trends in surface ozone concentrations. Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association, 51, 1202-1210.

Page last updated 8 December 2011