News and Media

NCEO PhD students awarded prestigious EUMETSAT fellowships

At NCEO we pride ourselves on helping our students not only excel in their studies but prepare them for their future careers. We are very happy to be able to share that two of our PhD students, Sanjeevani Panditharatne (Imperial College London) and Laura Risley (University of Reading), are moving on and pursuing research fellowships with the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).

Sanjeevani Panditharatne has been looking at the implications of far infrared on the Earth’s Radiation Budget, her research is key to understanding the role it plays in influencing the planets climate and weather patterns. Laura’s PhD looks to implement new velocity variables in variational ocean data assimilation systems in preparation for ocean-current measurements from satellites, this is crucial to improving forecasts of ocean variables.

During her fellowship Laura will be focussing on advancing the assimilation of Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) in ECMWF’s global weather forecasting system. These are observations derived from cloud motions in polar and geostationary satellites. Her role will focus on monitoring and assessing the current use of these observations and evaluating new AMV products from upcoming EUMETSAT missions.

Sanjeevani will be looking at the assimilation of microwave radiances into their weather forecasting system. This could also include exploiting the sensitivity of microwaves to cloud properties, precipitation, and surface types to improve our understanding of their radiative properties, with a focus on new EUMETSAT polar-orbiting satellites.

We are very excited to see our students go off to such important research fellowships and wish them both the very best.

Professor Amos Lawless, training lead at NCEO, had this to say:

I was delighted to hear that both Laura and Sanjee had been appointed to these prestigious fellowships. It is a great achievement and we wish them every success as they leave NCEO and take up their new roles at the forefront of research on using satellite data for weather forecasting.”