Irish Meteorological Society

IrishMetSoc

Since there are so many people on boards.ie with a huge interest in weather and related topics, I thought that I should draw your attention to the Irish Meteorological Society (IMS).

The society organises several lectures throughout the year as well as a one day conference, a field trip, quiz and annual dinner. In addition, some weather competitions will be launched soon. All of the competitions and lectures are free to members of the public and speakers for the forthcoming season include Evelyn Cusack, Gerald Fleming and Seamus Walsh (Met Éireann), John Gibbons (Irish Times), Dr Rodrigo Caballero (UCD), Captain James Brady (Irish Air Corps), Professor Colin O’Dowd (NUI Galway and Mace Head Research station), Dr Frank Mulligan (NUI Maynooth), Tony Maguire (Dublin City Council), Dr Pat Goodman (DIT), Dr Edward Graham (Lews Castle College, Scotland) and Gillian Whelan (NUI Cork). Topics covered will include health and weather, weather from a pilot’s point of view, contrails, flooding in Dublin, media and climate change, seasonal forecasting and broadcast meteorology.

I hope that you will consider coming along to some of the talks and partaking in some of our competitions. For more information take a look at http://www.irishmetsociety.org/cms/

IrishMetSoc

PS Feel free to comment and ask questions

M.T. Cranium

Thanks for that interesting information.

You (meaning both casual readers and the person posting above) may be quite interested to check out some of the long-range monthly forecasts made by boards.ie members each month in this forum. I took over the duties of setting the questions and scoring the results early in 2009.

I have to say, I have found the quality of most of these forecasts very good, there are people on here who quite routinely guess the mean monthly temp within about a degree C and the extremes within about that same range, which is quite excellent when you consider most of the month is well over the event horizon of the models on the first of each month (our cut-off date).

Okay, once or twice it's pretty obvious that a hot day in the near forecast period will be the monthly high, but factoring out those occasions, even so, the forecasts are remarkably good for what I presume to be mostly non-professional weather enthusiasts. I could say the same about UK forecast competitions too. I'm a participant, but I would say one of the weaker links in the chain, my own speciality is more in the short-term where I have a bit of a background, although I am more of a maverick researcher nowadays than a mainstream professional forecaster.

This is an area, as I'm sure professional organizations and national met services realize, where the general public are more capable of picking up the basic science and the methodology than in most other sciences, I mean just think of the chaos and carnage if "atomic physics enthusiasts" tried their hands at splitting atoms, or if "medicine enthusiasts" were let loose in a hospital (perhaps not the best example). It's much like amateur astronomy where some of the more skilled people actually make useful discoveries and spot comets or asteroids before the large institutions, not every time, but as they are free to do what they want and aren't on a routine schedule, it does happen that way. To some extent, this has become the same principle in forecasting, where people who want that kind of info have discovered that they can supplement the available routine forecasts, however made and delivered, with whatever the internet has to offer, or their own assessment of the current radar ... so it's really important, I feel, for weather communities like this one to establish a kind of teaching and learning environment where newbies can get the hang of how to interpret guidance, and more seasoned people realize they have a responsibility to check out what they are suggesting to people with the best available understanding out there.

Anyways, all of the above offered in a spirit of comradely interest in all things meteorological, and one hopes that the Irish and other national weather agencies, as well as other professionals, realize the depth of both interest and in many cases understanding of weather phenomena out there among the general public.

IrishMetSoc

Thank you for your reply M.T.

We would also like to invite one of the amateur meteorologists on this site to present a lecture to the society during the coming season e.g. to discuss your observational set-up, local weather effects, statistics etc, etc.

We will be launching a photography competition soon, as well as a forecast contest - there will be monetary prizes ...

M.T. Cranium

If it's like golf, you will have to keep the prizes under a set limit, or we'll lose our amateur status. However, I suspect there is more desire to keep one's amateur golf status intact than in this other sport.

Trogdor

Thanks for the info IMS, very intersting. I'll certainly try and head along to a few of the lectures!

IrishMetSoc

We will provide more details about the Autumn schedule over the next few weeks.

Deep Easterly

Very interesting indeed, and thanks for the links and info Irishmet. Will you be having many lectures in NUIGalway?

IrishMetSoc

We hope to have a lecture in Galway, as the president of the society lives there, but we have not finalised anything just yet.

Our one-day conference may interest you - we are planning to have about 6 talks some Saturday in the spring.

TheGreenGiant

Any talks/lectures coming up in the Dublin area?

IrishMetSoc

Yes, most of our lectures are held in Trinity College Dublin. The first of the season will be on in Oct and I'll post more details about this once we have it finalised.

TheGreenGiant

Ah thats great news. I never knew lectures on this topic were held in Trinity. This will be a great help for college and just general info! I will definitely be there anyway

IrishMetSoc

That's great. We have one lecture a month (possibly 2 speakers some nights) and a one-day meeting/conference in the Spring.

Deep Easterly

IrishMetSoc wrote: »

We hope to have a lecture in Galway, as the president of the society lives there, but we have not finalised anything just yet.

Our one-day conference may interest you - we are planning to have about 6 talks some Saturday in the spring.

Thanks I.M.S. It all sounds very exciting. Please continue to keep us updated. Those monthly lectures in Trinity College sound very interesting also. Hopefully I will be able to get to a few of them anyways.