Data Assimilation Research Centre

Many congratulations to DARC's Dr. Ieuan Higgs for successfully defending his PhD thesis this week!
"Machine learning and complex network techniques and to inform marine biogeochemistry modelling and data assimilation"

Data assimilation training @ Univ. of Reading 2025 - DARC Our recent NERC/NCEO/DARC Training course on data assimilation and its interface with machine learning took place from 9-13 June 2025 at the University of Reading and online. It was wonderful...Read M...

The latest DARC blog is all about the last month's NCEO/DARC data assimilation training course. The course has received very good feedback! Thanks for support from @NERC @nceoscience.bsky.social and @UniRdg.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

The tech giants use AI but is it any good? The biggest tech firms are using AI to forecast the weather but is that better than existing models?

Excellent BBC weather article today on AI in weather forecasting.
www.bbc.co.uk/weather/arti...

How computational limitations can lead to fun and new mathematics! - DARC by Jemima M. Tabeart, TU Eindhoven When designing data assimilation algorithms, we want to exploit access to lots of parallel computational resource, while ensuring that we can obtain our results...Re...

Read one of our latest DARC blogs on a new mathematical preconditioning method applied to an iterative problem to make it efficient to solve. By Jemima Tabeart.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

The value of observations for weather prediction in the age of machine learning - DARC by Sarah L Dance A few months ago, on 25th February 2025, our colleagues at ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts) took their deep-learning-based global weather forecasting system,...

Read one of our latest DARC blogs on the difficultly of initialising machine-learned models with data assimilation. By Sarah Dance.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

The value of observations for weather prediction in the age of machine learning - DARC by Sarah L Dance A few months ago, on 25th February 2025, our colleagues at ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts) took their deep-learning-based global weather forecasting system,...

This week’s DARC blog is written by Sarah Dance on the topic: “The value of observations for weather prediction in the age of machine learning”. You can read it here: research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

TCCAS: The Terrestrial Carbon Cycle Assimilation System - DARC by Tristan Quaife, May 2025 Implementing a Data Assimilation system for a model can be an arduous task, often involving a substantial amount of reprogramming. A better option, where possible,...Read M...

The latest DARC blog by Tristan Quaife discusses The Terrestrial Carbon Cycle Assimilation System exploring its development and potential applications. Links to the TCCAS are available at the end of the blog if you want to use it yourself!

research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

In Reading on Saturday 17th May? Why not pop along to the University of Reading community festival 2025?
www.reading.ac.uk/about/local-...

Progress in estimating the state of the atmosphere-ocean system - DARC This blog highlights new methods for improving data assimilation in coupled atmosphere-ocean systems. Traditional approaches struggle with the differing scales of the ocean and atmosphere. A new techn...

In our latest DARC blog post, Peter Jan van Leeuwen presents new work on advanced data assimilation methods for estimating the coupled atmosphere-ocean system, highlighting approaches for capturing cross-scale correlations.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

Simultaneous estimation of the atmosphere and ocean states - DARC by Amos Lawless, April 2025 Why is the ocean relevant for weather forecasts? The weather we experience each day is influenced not just by what is happening throughout the atmosphere,...Read More >

DARC's latest blog is out. Read Amos Lawless's blog about why the ocean plays an important role in weather forecasting and how statistical relationships between the ocean and the atmosphere should be accounted for in coupled data assimilation.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

The least squares method in data assimilation - DARC by Ross Bannister, April 2025 The method of least squares (or MLS, Barlow, 1993) is at the very centre of variational data assimilation (or “Var”, Schlatter, 2000). Var is one...Read More >

Read about the method of least squares and its central role in data assimilation in our latest blog, by Ross Bannister.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

Hybrid modeling of sea ice column physics - DARC by Giovanni De Cillis(1) and Alberto Carrassi(1,2),March 2025 (1): Dept of physics, U Bologna, IT (2): Visiting Professor at U of Reading, UK Our research aims to develop a hybrid,...Read More >

Read DARC's latest blog by Giovanni De Cillis and Alberto Carrassi to find out how a machine-learning model can enhance a traditional model of sea ice and reduce model error significantly.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

Understanding the Land Surface Temperature retrievals from satellites - DARC by Riccardo Monfardini, March 2025 In this blog post, I will briefly introduce how land surface temperature (LST) is measured from satellites, the associated challenges, and the results. My name...Rea...

Read about the challenges of estimating land surface temperatures from satellite -- see DARC's latest blog written by Riccardo Monfardini.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

Your noise is my signal: using unconventional observations in Data Assimilation - DARC by Javier Amezcua, February 2025 My name is Javier Amezcua and I am currently an Associate Professor at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. I spent 10 years at the University...Read More >

Read Javier Amezcua's new blog about how analysing distant explosions can help us forecast the weather.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...

PhD Studentship in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Mathematics for our Future Climate: Theory, Data and Simulation at University of Reading Explore the PhD Studentship in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Mathematics for our Future Climate: Theory, Data and Simulation on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for higher education. Appl...

2 PhD studentships are being advertised in the Maths for our Future Climate PhD programme at the Univ of Reading.
"Can we improve past climate state estimates using more recent observations?"
(See separate post for the other project)
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLV076/p...

PhD Studentship in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Mathematics for our Future Climate: Theory, Data and Simulation at University of Reading Apply for a PhD Studentship in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in the Mathematics for our Future Climate: Theory, Data and Simulation. Discover a wide range of PhD opportunities at jobs.ac.uk.

2 PhD studentships are being advertised in the Maths for our Future Climate PhD programme at the Univ of Reading.
"Large ensembles of machine learning forecasts for advanced nonlinear filters in atmospheric data assimilation"
(See separate post for the other project)
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DLV093/p...

Postdoctoral Researcher (CRISP):Whiteknights Reading UK

We are looking for a post-doc to work on sea ice data assimilation:
jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Improving Arctic Sea Ice Forecasts with Ensemble Data Assimilation - DARC by Sukun Cheng, February 2025 The research presented here was carried out during my postdoctoral position at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) in Bergen, Norway. My work...Rea...

Data assimilation in sea ice models is challenging! Read Sukun Cheng's new blog on the assimilation of sea ice thickness and concentration observations.
research.reading.ac.uk/met-darc/202...