Scale-selective verification of rainfall accumulations from high-resolution forecasts of convective events

The development of NWP models with grid spacing down to 1 km should produce more realistic forecasts of convective storms. However, greater realism does not necessarily mean more accurate precipitation forecasts. The rapid growth of errors on small scales in conjunction with preexisting errors on larger scales may limit the usefulness of such models. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether improved model resolution alone is able to produce more skillful precipitation forecasts on useful scales, and how the skill varies with spatial scale. A verification method will be described in which skill is determined from a comparison of rainfall forecasts with radar using fractional coverage over different sized areas. The Met Office Unified Model was run with grid spacings of 12, 4, and 1 km for 10 days in which convection occurred during the summers of 2003 and 2004. All forecasts were run from 12-km initial states for a clean comparison. The results show that the 1-km model was the most skillful over all but the smallest scales (approximately <10–15 km). A measure of acceptable skill was defined; this was attained by the 1-km model at scales around 40–70 km, some 10–20 km less than that of the 12-km model. The biggest improvement occurred for heavier, more localized rain, despite it being more difficult to predict. The 4-km model did not improve much on the 12-km model because of the difficulties of representing convection at that resolution, which was accentuated by the spinup from 12-km fields.

Experiences of learning French: a snapshot at Years 11, 12 and 13

This paper considers the attitudes of students in Years 11, 12 and 13 towards French and, in particular, how they view the reasons behind their level of achievement. It reports findings from a small-scale pilot study, conducted in four schools and colleges, involving 83 students in Year 11, 26 in Year 12 and 14 in Year 13. The findings indicate that French is perceived by many Year 11 students to be difficult and uninteresting. These students, furthermore, do not consider that French is of much benefit in terms of their future career. The data suggest that there is a tendency among students in all three year groups to attribute their lack of success in French to their own low ability and to the difficulty of tasks set, which, it is argued, may affect their levels of motivation in a negative way. Few students in the study have any insight into the importance of learning strategies in overcoming difficulties experienced in language learning. Students' attitudes are then discussed in relation to learning strategy training. It is argued that if learners are encouraged to explore the possibility that their achievement in French may be related to the efficacy of the learning strategies they use, rather than to factors such as low ability or task difficulty, their self-concept, motivation and language learning achievements can be enhanced. A brief outline is given of a planned research project which proposes to address these issues further.

Proceedings of the inaugural construction management and economics ‘Past, Present and Future’ conference CME25, 16-18 July 2007, University of Reading, UK

This conference was an unusual and interesting event. Celebrating 25 years of Construction Management and Economics provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the research that has been reported over the years, to consider where we are now, and to think about the future of academic research in this area. Hence the sub-title of this conference: “past, present and future”. Looking through these papers, some things are clear. First, the range of topics considered interesting has expanded hugely since the journal was first published. Second, the research methods are also more diverse. Third, the involvement of wider groups of stakeholder is evident. There is a danger that this might lead to dilution of the field. But my instinct has always been to argue against the notion that Construction Management and Economics represents a discipline, as such. Granted, there are plenty of university departments around the world that would justify the idea of a discipline. But the vast majority of academic departments who contribute to the life of this journal carry different names to this. Indeed, the range and breadth of methodological approaches to the research reported in Construction Management and Economics indicates that there are several different academic disciplines being brought to bear on the construction sector. Some papers are based on economics, some on psychology and others on operational research, sociology, law, statistics, information technology, and so on. This is why I maintain that construction management is not an academic discipline, but a field of study to which a range of academic disciplines are applied. This may be why it is so interesting to be involved in this journal. The problems to which the papers are applied develop and grow. But the broad topics of the earliest papers in the journal are still relevant today. What has changed a lot is our interpretation of the problems that confront the construction sector all over the world, and the methodological approaches to resolving them. There is a constant difficulty in dealing with topics as inherently practical as these. While the demands of the academic world are driven by the need for the rigorous application of sound methods, the demands of the practical world are quite different. It can be difficult to meet the needs of both sets of stakeholders at the same time. However, increasing numbers of postgraduate courses in our area result in larger numbers of practitioners with a deeper appreciation of what research is all about, and how to interpret and apply the lessons from research. It also seems that there are contributions coming not just from construction-related university departments, but also from departments with identifiable methodological traditions of their own. I like to think that our authors can publish in journals beyond the construction-related areas, to disseminate their theoretical insights into other disciplines, and to contribute to the strength of this journal by citing our articles in more mono-disciplinary journals. This would contribute to the future of the journal in a very strong and developmental way. The greatest danger we face is in excessive self-citation, i.e. referring only to sources within the CM&E literature or, worse, referring only to other articles in the same journal. The only way to ensure a strong and influential position for journals and university departments like ours is to be sure that our work is informing other academic disciplines. This is what I would see as the future, our logical next step. If, as a community of researchers, we are not producing papers that challenge and inform the fundamentals of research methods and analytical processes, then no matter how practically relevant our output is to the industry, it will remain derivative and secondary, based on the methodological insights of others. The balancing act between methodological rigour and practical relevance is a difficult one, but not, of course, a balance that has to be struck in every single paper.

Harringtonian virtue: Harrington, Machiavelli, and the method of the 'Moment'

This article presents a reinterpretation of James Harrington's writings. It takes issue with J. G. A. Pocock's reading, which treats him as importing into England a Machiavellian ‘language of political thought’. This reading is the basis of Pocock's stress on the republicanism of eighteenth-century opposition values. Harrington's writings were in fact a most implausible channel for such ideas. His outlook owed much to Stoicism. Unlike the Florentine, he admired the contemplative life; was sympathetic to commerce; and was relaxed about the threat of ‘corruption’ (a concept that he did not understand). These views can be associated with his apparent aims: the preservation of a national church with a salaried but politically impotent clergy; and the restoration of the royalist gentry to a leading role in English politics. Pocock's hypothesis is shown to be conditioned by his method; its weaknesses reflect some difficulties inherent in the notion of ‘languages of thought’.

The impact of E-commerce on retail real estate in the UK

This article summarizes the main research findings from the first of a series of annual surveys conducted for the British Council of Shopping Centres. The study examines the changing pattern of retailing in the United Kingdom and provides an overview of key research from previous studies in both the U.K. and the United States. The main findings are then presented, including an examination of the impact of e-commerce on sales and rental values and on the future space and ownership / leasing requirements of U.K. retailers for 2000-2005. The impact on a shopping center in a case study town in the U.K. is also considered. The difficulties of isolating the impact of e-commerce from other forces for change in retailing are highlighted. In contrast to other viewpoints, the results show that e-commerce will not mean the death of conventional store-based U.K. retailing, although further benchmark research is needed.

On the determination of atmospheric water vapor from GPS measurements

Surface-based GPS measurements of zenith path delay (ZPD) can be used to derive vertically integrated water vapor (IWV) of the atmosphere. ZPD data are collected in a global network presently consisting of 160 stations as part of the International GPS Service. In the present study, ZPD data from this network are converted into IWV using observed surface pressure and mean atmospheric water vapor column temperature obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' (ECMWF) operational analyses (OA). For the 4 months of January/July 2000/2001, the GPS-derived IWV values are compared to the IWV from the ECMWF OA, with a special focus on the monthly averaged difference (bias) and the standard deviation of daily differences. This comparison shows that the GPS-derived IWV values are well suited for the validation of OA of IWV. For most GPS stations, the IWV data agree quite well with the analyzed data indicating that they are both correct at these locations. Larger differences for individual days are interpreted as errors in the analyses. A dry bias in the winter is found over central United States, Canada, and central Siberia, suggesting a systematic analysis error. Larger differences were mainly found in mountain areas. These were related to representation problems and interpolation difficulties between model height and station height. In addition, the IWV comparison can be used to identify errors or problems in the observations of ZPD. This includes errors in the data itself, e.g., erroneous outlier in the measured time series, as well as systematic errors that affect all IWV values at a specific station. Such stations were excluded from the intercomparison. Finally, long-term requirements for a GPS-based water vapor monitoring system are discussed.

Phonological sensitivity and reading: evidence from precocious readers

This paper reports the results from a study investigating the level of phonological sensitivity, letter knowledge and reading ability of two groups of children between the ages of 5 and 7 years. One group of children were identifies as being fluent readers at the age of 5 years, before they had begun school. These children were paired with a group of children of the same age and vocabulary development but who were not yet reading. The performance of the two groups of children on the tasks measuring phonological sensitivity confirmed the view of Stanovich (1986, 1992) that phonological sensitivity lies on a continuum from shallow to deep. Shallow levels of phonological sensitivity, tapped by rhyming tasks, seem to be necessary for reading to progress whereas deeper levels of sensitivity develop later and have a more reciprocal relationship to the reading process.

An illustrative case study of precocious reading ability

This is a longitudinal case study of a child who taught herself to read before she went to school. This case study is drawn from a wider study of a group of precocious readers, all of whom had received no explicit instruction, but who had had positive literacy experiences in their homes. The subject of this study was able to read fluently at the age of 5 years and 4 months. Her reading was at least 5 years ahead of her chronological age and her spelling was 4 years ahead. Her reading speed was also very proficient. Moreover, tests indicated that her pseudoword reading was highly accurate and that she was highly proficient on a series of measures of phonemic awareness. Her performance was also assessed at the ages of 6, 7, and 11 years. She continued to show high levels of ability in all aspects of literacy. This study contrasts with recent case studies on very precocious readers who showed poor levels of phonological awareness and who were unable to spell at an early age.

Problems in four-dimensional data assimilation

With the introduction of new observing systems based on asynoptic observations, the analysis problem has changed in character. In the near future we may expect that a considerable part of meteorological observations will be unevenly distributed in four dimensions, i.e. three dimensions in space and one in time. The term analysis, or objective analysis in meteorology, means the process of interpolating observed meteorological observations from unevenly distributed locations to a network of regularly spaced grid points. Necessitated by the requirement of numerical weather prediction models to solve the governing finite difference equations on such a grid lattice, the objective analysis is a three-dimensional (or mostly two-dimensional) interpolation technique. As a consequence of the structure of the conventional synoptic network with separated data-sparse and data-dense areas, four-dimensional analysis has in fact been intensively used for many years. Weather services have thus based their analysis not only on synoptic data at the time of the analysis and climatology, but also on the fields predicted from the previous observation hour and valid at the time of the analysis. The inclusion of the time dimension in objective analysis will be called four-dimensional data assimilation. From one point of view it seems possible to apply the conventional technique on the new data sources by simply reducing the time interval in the analysis-forecasting cycle. This could in fact be justified also for the conventional observations. We have a fairly good coverage of surface observations 8 times a day and several upper air stations are making radiosonde and radiowind observations 4 times a day. If we have a 3-hour step in the analysis-forecasting cycle instead of 12 hours, which is applied most often, we may without any difficulties treat all observations as synoptic. No observation would thus be more than 90 minutes off time and the observations even during strong transient motion would fall within a horizontal mesh of 500 km * 500 km.

Estimation of optimal gravity wave parameters for climate models using data assimilation

There is a current need to constrain the parameters of gravity wave drag (GWD) schemes in climate models using observational information instead of tuning them subjectively. In this work, an inverse technique is developed using data assimilation principles to estimate gravity wave parameters. Because mostGWDschemes assume instantaneous vertical propagation of gravity waves within a column, observations in a single column can be used to formulate a one-dimensional assimilation problem to estimate the unknown parameters. We define a cost function that measures the differences between the unresolved drag inferred from observations (referred to here as the ‘observed’ GWD) and the GWD calculated with a parametrisation scheme. The geometry of the cost function presents some difficulties, including multiple minima and ill-conditioning because of the non-independence of the gravity wave parameters. To overcome these difficulties we propose a genetic algorithm to minimize the cost function, which provides a robust parameter estimation over a broad range of prescribed ‘true’ parameters. When real experiments using an independent estimate of the ‘observed’ GWD are performed, physically unrealistic values of the parameters can result due to the non-independence of the parameters. However, by constraining one of the parameters to lie within a physically realistic range, this degeneracy is broken and the other parameters are also found to lie within physically realistic ranges. This argues for the essential physical self-consistency of the gravity wave scheme. A much better fit to the observed GWD at high latitudes is obtained when the parameters are allowed to vary with latitude. However, a close fit can be obtained either in the upper or the lower part of the profiles, but not in both at the same time. This result is a consequence of assuming an isotropic launch spectrum. The changes of sign in theGWDfound in the tropical lower stratosphere, which are associated with part of the quasi-biennial oscillation forcing, cannot be captured by the parametrisation with optimal parameters.

Life at university with Asperger syndrome: a comparison of student and staff perspectives

Although increasing numbers of students with disabilities are accessing higher education, there is relatively little information about the needs of students with Asperger syndrome. Crucially, students themselves have rarely been included in research examining their needs or the supports they might find helpful. Three focus groups, one with students with Asperger syndrome and two with staff were conducted to explore the challenges, barriers and supports to students’ successful progress though one university in the UK. Thematic analysis revealed some key differences between staff and student perspectives, particularly with regard to impact of sensory sensitivities and daily life difficulties on academic progress. Students and staff also held differing views about what is helpful, relating to disclosure of diagnosis and the value of formal social supports. The study highlights the importance of developing services beyond traditional academic supports that students with Asperger syndrome themselves feel are valuable.

Social development as knowledge building: research as a sphere of policy influence

The value of using social development knowledge as a tool for building development policy was promoted by the British Department for International Development in the late 1990s. This article takes the case of a capacity building initiative that sought to build social development knowledge as a resource for policy formulation in 'southern' countries. Situating knowledge as a development resource presents difficulties for intervention processes that have historically developed to provide access to economic and social assets. This article highlights some of the issues involved in trying to build social development capacity and questions the suitability of this style of intervention. Inappropriate and short-term support for knowledge capacity building carries the danger that the traditional separation between the academic and practice spheres will be reinforced, making the process of democratising knowledge more difficult.