Dr Marion Mittermaier
Marion works on the evaluation of models across space and time scales
Areas of expertise
- Hydro-meteorology.
- Statistics.
- Specialised observations: e.g. radar.
Publications by Marion Mittermaier
Current activities
Marion works within the Model Evaluation team within the Global Model Evaluation and Development section. As global NWP resolutions continue to progress towards sub-10 km, she is forming a bridge between the diagnostics specifically developed for regional km-scale Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and those developed for global sub-seasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) time scales so that the best of both worlds become accessible irrespective of resolution or lead time horizon.
Marion's focus is on developing both convective-scale and seamless tools for identifying systematic errors alongside extracting maximum usefulness from the model forecasts, despite these errors. She is also the Met Office science lead for the implementation of a community-based open-source evaluation tool METplus as the future operational verification system read for the next generation of models and supercomputers.
Career background
Marion joined the Met Office in February 2004. She started work in the Mesoscale Forecast model development and diagnostics group, where she tested, developed and implemented new spatial verification methods for high-resolution precipitation forecasts. She was also involved in in-depth diagnostic studies of cloud parameters and visibility, and devised new formulations of key performance metrics. She also conducted modelling sensitivity experiments of resolved convection in the tropics (using a high-resolution version of the Unified Model). From 2008 until recently she managed a team of scientists and software engineers developing systems and diagnostics for the verification and evaluation of NWP models.
Prior to joining the Met Office Marion completed a PhD at the University of Reading (2003), which focused on exploiting the synergy between model forecasts and radar. Her under-graduate background is in Applied Mathematics, Meteorology and Statistics. She started her career at the South African Weather Service in 1995 working on analysing aircraft in-situ observations of cloud-aerosol interactions, and microphysical processes in thunderstorms, storm dynamics (using radar data), and hydrometeorology. She has lectured post-graduate courses in cloud dynamics and radar meteorology.
External Recognition
Marion was the co-chair of the WMO World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) Joint Working Group on Forecast Verification Research (JWGFVR) until November 2020, of which she remains a member. In 2015 she was the first woman to receive the LG Groves prize for contributions to Meteorology, which is awarded by the Royal Air Force. The award dates back to WW2. She is chair of the verification expert team of the European Working Group for Limited Area Models (EWGLAM). She was a member of the WMO Commission for Basic Systems (CBS) Task Team (TT) on global surface verification. She has also been a member of the verification sub-group to the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). She is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society.