I arrived in the morning right before the start of the first orals. With luck, the talk I wanted to attend was located near the entrance, so I went and listened to about 10 talks on ensemble forecasting. One of those talks was presented by Nina Horat on “Uncertainty quantification for data-driven weather models”, which is a problem that is arising in the field of AI weather forecasting to try and encompass a probabilistic view in their models. I then joined Haneen and Conor in Hall A where people were presenting their posters on evapotranspiration. In the afternoon, I attended a fascinating talk from Hannah Bloomfield, talking about energy droughts in the UK using different methodologies and giving information about future climate and energy system scenarios. She works in collaboration with the UK operating power system and uses demand as an input. It is interesting to hear what she has to say about the goals for bringing climate and energy system modellers together.
The next day, there were no orals or posters presented that were of interest to me, so I spent the day reviewing my poster and doing some personal work. In the afternoon, I went to visit the poster Haneen was presenting, who seemed to be delighted from her afternoon after having so much feedback and conversations with other researchers. I then went to the early career scientist networking reception, where I came across some old friends from my undergraduate university in Lyon. I had a long chat with them, and we then assisted in a short course organized by scientists' rebellion activists on “igniting academic activism for urgent climate action”.
On Wednesday, things became interesting for me, I attended the session focused on modelling renewable energy systems throughout the day. In the morning, I went to see the posters, and I talked to other fellow early career scientists working on similar subjects but focusing their attention on very specific topics. For example, some people were more interested in the economic costs, while others seemed more about the power grid itself. Finally, I met a scientist working for the national system operator in the Netherlands who evaluated different methods to assess the risk of occurrence of renewable energy droughts events. In the literature, there is no consensus on the definitions of a renewable energy drought event, and so he tried to compare different methods to see which yields better results. The oral session was in the afternoon and again, the topics presented were really specific on trying to find solutions to better model renewable energy systems. During the break, I was able to talk to Hannah and ask her a few questions about her work and how to approach certain aspects of our work. One advice she gave me is not to spend too much time on making the models perfect, as it is a never-ending pursuit. In the evening I joined Haneen, Conor, and other colleagues to have dinner in the city centre.
The following morning, I spent more time listening to presentations about renewable energy models, ranging from the influence of meteorological variables on wind turbines to the use of machine learning to replace weather stations or even the impact of air pollutant emission on solar energy production. Hannah presented another oral on identifying how global weather patterns are responsible for renewable energy droughts in India. The methodology applied is similar to what she had presented on Monday but for large spatial scale patterns in a country. After a short lunch break, I went to the Hall 4 to display my poster. The session started at 4 p.m., so I had a bit more time to attend orals on climate science models and renewable energy research, where researchers presented methods to compare the effect of climate variables on renewable energy production. At half past three, it was finally time for me to stand next to my poster. Haneen and Conor came to see me if everything was alright and to take a picture to immortalise my first time at the EGU. For more than two hours, I spent most of my time explaining my work to different people who were passing by the poster and stopped out of interest or curiosity. Some researchers that I have seen at multiple talks and oral sessions during the week also came for this poster session, and I was able to talk to some of them. The questions I was asked the most frequently were about the choice of the models I have used and on the decision not to incorporate demand as a factor to define an energy drought. At the end of my session, I was joined by my friends, and we went to get some food to finish this long, but wonderful day.
On the final day of the event, I spent most of my time walking around the halls to look at posters in other fields of geosciences that were presented such as cryosphere, atmospheric science, natural hazards, future climate, oceanography, etc…, to understand the diversity at the EGU.
For my first time at the EGU, I had a wonderful experience with the amount of people I was able to discuss with. I also tried to catch which other universities or laboratories were interested in similar topics. Conor asked me if I would like to present my work in an oral presentation for this kind of expert audience, and I think I would like to at some point, but not right now as my project is still not mature enough.
To finish, here are some picture I took at the EGU.
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Boris
