The Inaugural Tom Keane AGMET Lecture – Tuesday 5th Sept 2017, Glasnevin, Dublin
The Inaugural Tom Keane Lecture will be given by Met Éireann’s Head of Forecast Division, Gerald Fleming, with a talk entitled ‘A half-century of weather forecasting in Ireland’
This talk will consider how weather forecasting has evolved since the early days of AGMET – from charts that were plotted and analysed by hand, through the explosion of data from weather satellites, the automation of surface weather observations, and on to the “computing revolution” that brought us Numerical Weather Prediction. Where farmers once had to pay rapt attention to the “weatherman” after the Nine O’clock News, now weather information is on-tap 24hrs a day. The presentation will dwell not just on the changes, but the challenges that these changes have brought in their wake.
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Gerald Fleming is Head of Forecast Division for Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service. He took out B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Experimental Physics before joining Met Éireann in 1980. For most of his 37 years with Met Éireann he has worked as a weather forecaster and a weather broadcaster. For the World Meteorological Organisation he has been Chair of the Open Programme Area Group on Public Weather Services for the past decade, and is a member of the Management Group of the Commission for Basic Systems. He has lectured extensively, and conducted many training courses, on weather communication and related matters. Among his publications, he is chapter author of the joint World Bank / WMO / Climate Services partnership publication “Valuing Weather and Climate; – Economic Assessment of Meteorological and Hydrological Services”.
This event, organised jointly by the AGMET Group and the Irish Meteorological Society, is to launch the Tom Keane AGMET Lecture Series. Tom, who sadly passed away last year, was a founder of the AGMET Group in 1984. The ongoing Tom Keane lecture series is an attempt to commemorate Tom’s influence on Irish agrometeorology and his passion for education.
Full Programme Includes:
Venue: National Botanic Gardens lecture theatre
Date: Tuesday 5th Sep 2017
Time: 7pm – 8.30pm
5:30 pm Optional Tour of National Botanic Gardens [email: info@agmet.ie for details]
6:30 pm Registration, Tea/Coffee
7:00 pm Welcome from the IMS – Declan Murphy – Overview IMS, EMS 2017
7:05 pm AGMET Group overview – Keith Lambkin – History and current activities
7:15 pm National Botanic Gardens – Felicity Gaffney – History and current activities
7:30 pm Tom Keane Lecture – Gerald Fleming – Guest speaker
8:00 pm Presentation to Tom Keane’s family
8:05 pm Bronze medal talk – Winner of Bronze medal
8:15 pm Presentation of Bronze medal
8:20 pm Concluding Remarks – Keith Lambkin
8:30pm Ends