scholarly journals THORPEX Research and the Science of Prediction

2017 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 807-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. B. Parsons ◽  
M. Beland ◽  
D. Burridge ◽  
P. Bougeault ◽  
G. Brunet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Predictive Skill ◽  
High Impact Weather

Abstract The Observing System Research and Predictability Experiment (THORPEX) was a 10-yr, international research program organized by the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather Research Program. THORPEX was motivated by the need to accelerate the rate of improvement in the accuracy of 1-day to 2-week forecasts of high-impact weather for the benefit of society, the economy, and the environment. THORPEX, which took place from 2005 to 2014, was the first major international program focusing on the advancement of global numerical weather prediction systems since the Global Atmospheric Research Program, which took place almost 40 years earlier, from 1967 through 1982. The scientific achievements of THORPEX were accomplished through bringing together scientists from operational centers, research laboratories, and the academic community to collaborate on research that would ultimately advance operational predictive skill. THORPEX included an unprecedented effort to make operational products readily accessible to the broader academic research community, with community efforts focused on problems where challenging science intersected with the potential to accelerate improvements in predictive skill. THORPEX also collaborated with other major programs to identify research areas of mutual interest, such as topics at the intersection of weather and climate. THORPEX research has 1) increased our knowledge of the global-to-regional influences on the initiation, evolution, and predictability of high-impact weather; 2) provided insight into how predictive skill depends on observing strategies and observing systems; 3) improved data assimilation and ensemble forecast systems; 4) advanced knowledge of high-impact weather associated with tropical and polar circulations and their interactions with midlatitude flows; and 5) expanded society’s use of weather information through applied and social science research.

Return to Meaning

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
No Value ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Cluttered Environment ◽  
Student Fees ◽  
Social Uses

This book argues that we are currently witnessing not merely a decline in the quality of social science research, but a proliferation of meaningless research of no value to society and modest value to its authors—apart from securing employment and promotion. The explosion of published outputs, at least in social science, creates a noisy, cluttered environment which makes meaningful research difficult, as different voices compete to capture the limelight even briefly. Older, but more impressive contributions are easily neglected as the premium is to write and publish, not read and learn. The result is a widespread cynicism among academics on the value of academic research, sometimes including their own. Publishing comes to be seen as a game of hits and misses, devoid of intrinsic meaning and value and of no wider social uses whatsoever. This is what the book views as the rise of nonsense in academic research, which represents a serious social problem. It undermines the very point of social science. This problem is far from ‘academic’. It affects many areas of social and political life entailing extensive waste of resources and inflated student fees as well as costs to taxpayers. The book’s second part offers a range of proposals aimed at restoring meaning at the heart of social science research, and drawing social science back, address the major problems and issues that face our societies.

scholarly journals Users and Social Science Research: Policy, Problems and Possibilities

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Rappert
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
User Involvement ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Policy Problems

Recent times have seen a significant reorientation in public funding for academic research across many countries. Public bodies in the UK have been at the forefront of such activities, typically justified in terms of a need to meet the challenges of international competitiveness and improve quality of life. One set of mechanisms advanced for further achieving these goals is the incorporation of users’ needs into various aspects of the research process. This paper examines some of the consequences of greater user involvement in the UK Economic and Social Research Council by drawing on both empirical evidence and more speculative argumentation. In doing so it poses some of the dilemmas for conceptualizing proper user involvement.

Franciscan Missions and Chiriguano Workers: Colonization, Acculturation and Indian Labor in Southeastern Bolivia

1987 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erick D. Langer
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Franciscan Missions ◽  
American Foundation ◽  
Science Research Council

An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Symposium “Bolivia: Formation and Development of a Labor Force, 1600 to the Present,” organized by Ann Zulawski and Lesley Gill for the 45th International Congress of Americanists, Bogotá, Colombia, 1985. The author wishes to thank Robert H. Jackson, Brooke Larson, and Nils Jacobsen for their comments on the paper. Research funds were provided by the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Research Program, and the Inter-American Foundation.

Diagnosing factors in parameterised and resolved convection with physical tendency output in AROME-Arctic during a Cold-Air Outbreak event

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin Kähnert ◽  
Teresa M. Valkonen ◽  
Harald Sodemann
Keyword(s):  
Weather Prediction ◽  
Cloud Microphysics ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Surface Fluxes ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Shallow Convection ◽  
Time Step ◽  
Cold Air ◽  
Weather Events ◽  
High Impact Weather

<p>Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models generally display comparatively low predictive skill in the Arctic. Particularly, the large impact of sub-grid scale, parameterised processes, such as surface fluxes, radiation or cloud microphysics during high-latitude weather events pose a substantial challenge for numerical modelling. Such processes are most influential during mesoscale weather events, such as polar lows, often embedded in cold air outbreaks (CAO), some of which cause high impact weather. Uncertainty in Arctic weather forecasts is thus critically dependent on parameterised processes. The strong influence from several parameterised processes also makes model forecasts particularly susceptible to compensation of errors from different parameterisations, which potentially limits model improvement.<br>Here we analyse model output of individual parameterised tendencies of wind, temperature and humidity during Arctic high-impact weather in AROME-Arctic, the operational NWP model used by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute Norway for the European Arctic. Individual tendencies describe the contribution of each applied physical parameterisation to a respective variable per model time step. We study a CAO-event taking place during 24 - 27 December 2015. This intense and widespread CAO event, reaching from the Fram Straight to Norway and affecting a particularly large portion of the Nordic seas at a time, was characterised by strong heat fluxes along the sea ice edge. <br>Model intern definitions for boundary layer type become apparent as a decisive factor in tendency contributions. Especially the interplay between the dual mass flux and the turbulence scheme is of essence here. Furthermore, sensitivity experiments, featuring a run without shallow convection and a run with a new statistical cloud scheme, show how a physically similar result is obtained by substantially different tendencies in the model.</p>

Office Hours: How (Critical) Norm Research Can Regain Its Voice

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Engelkamp ◽  
Katharina Glaab ◽  
Judith Renner
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Western Values

AbstractSocial Science research cannot be neutral. It always involves, so the argument of this article, the (re)production of social reality and thus has to be conceived as political practice. From this perspective, the present article looks into constructivist norm research. In the first part, we argue that constructivist norm research is political insofar as it tends to reproduce Western values that strengthen specific hegemonic discursive structures. However, this particular political position is hardly reflected on in norm research. Hence, it is our goal in the second part of the article to outline research strategies potentially useful in reflective and critical norm research. We propose a critical research program based upon three central methodological steps that are inspired by post-structuralism: first, the questioning of global hegemonic values; second, the reconstruction of marginalized knowledge; and third, the explicit reflection of one’s own research perspective.

RESEARCH STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING NEW KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY

2000 ◽  
Vol 08 (01) ◽  
pp. 47-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUS M GEURSEN
Keyword(s):  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Research Model ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
New Knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to examine a traditional academic research model frequently used in scholarly papers and the implications of this model in restricting growth and quality of new knowledge generation. The paper contends a traditional academic research process (TARP) is evident in business and the other social science research. It identifies concerns about the process and how it restricts new theory development. The paper provides an alternative model, the higher academic research model (HARP) which is characterised by closer interaction between research processes and phenomena under investigation. The paper concludes by demonstrating the increased output achievement of the new model.

Institutions Encouraging Competition, Instrumentalism, and Meaningless Research

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
Scientific Institutions ◽  
System P ◽  
Institutional Competition ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Right

The rise of mass education has led to mass research—quantity dominates quality. A ruthless institutional competition for status, plus academics pushing to get published in the ‘right’, career-enhancing journals, has led to the fetishization of journal outputs even when they are of little meaning or value to society. This situation is now endemic within the system of academic research and publication, and is strongly driven and sustained by academics themselves, even when they are unwilling to admit it. Academics, both individually and collectively, exercise considerable control over the content and nature of social science research, its scrutiny, assessment, and dissemination. They also have considerable control over the practices of various scientific institutions, including universities and their departments, funding bodies, conferences, and publications. Social science researchers underestimate and diminish their own responsibility for this state of affairs and sometimes prematurely adopt a victim position, blaming an impersonal system.

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