Anette Van der Wal
Anette's work involves development, maintenance and support for the NWP Area-Based Verification System.
Areas of expertise
- The NWP Area-Based Verification System
- Fortran 90 programming
- Unix shell scripting
Current activities
Anette manages the NWP Area-Based Verification System, which is used in the operational suite and in trials to provide objective verification of model parameters over a selection of areas. The results help to determine how well our models are performing. Recent developments to the system include adding support for verification of ensembles, and calculation of ensemble-specific statistics. Anette has ported the system to the Met Office IBM supercomputer, ensuring that timings are acceptable and the accuracy of results is within tolerance.
A key aspect of Anette's work is to create, test and release (roughly on a quarterly timescale) stable versions of the code which are used in the operational suite and can be provided to external customers. Anette is responsible for ensuring that all changes to the system are tested and reviewed, and she also provides user support.
Career background
Anette took up the post of managing the NWP Area-Based Verification System in 2003. Prior to that, from 1997 she worked on the Portable Unified Model and was responsible for the external release of version 4.5. She joined the Met Office in 1992 and worked on Unified Model Diagnostics, in particular working on low tracking and atmospheric blocking.
As an undergraduate, Anette studied Maths at the University of Leicester and also has an MSc in Operational Research from Southampton University.