People associated with ESTOFEX

People

Participants in ESTOFEX are listed below. The organizations with which the members are associated do not necessarily have a relation with ESTOFEX.

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Estofex forecasters

	Pieter Groenemeijer (The Netherlands, 1979; currently in Germany)
	Pieter Groenemeijer is working at the Ludwig-Maximilians Univeristät in München. His current job concerns the development of an ensemble forecasting system that does not only take the uncertainties of the large-scale flow into account, but also those that develop on the scale of convective storms and smaller. Before, he has successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at the University of Karlsruhe, which focused on the differences of convective storm development in weak and in strong vertical wind shear. In the past, he has worked at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), which resulted in a guide on forecasting severe convective storms. He has studied meteorology at Utrecht University (Netherlands) which included a half year's stay at the University of Oklahoma, USA. He has studied the application of Doppler radar in severe convective weather at the Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), resulting in this report. Pieter is involved with the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD), a project of the European Severe Storms Laboratory.
	Oscar van der Velde (Netherlands, 1977; currently in Spain)
	Oscar van der Velde is researcher of lightning and high-altitude electrical discharges (sprites, jets) produced by thunderstorm systems, at the Technical University of Catalonia. He obtained his PhD degree in the same field in Toulouse (2008), and his MSc degree in Meteorology from Wageningen University (2002). During and after his studies, he worked at the national meteorological institute in The Netherlands (KNMI) on topics as total lightning activity of thunderstorms compared to radar and other parameters, model initialization, and vertical profiles derived from aircraft observations. In 2001 Oscar visited the University of Oklahoma in Norman (USA) for six months to collaborate with Dr. MacGorman on relations between 3D lightning activity and precipitation types derived from polarimetric radar. He returned in 2003 and followed two advanced meteorology courses. Oscar runs a website showing his other main hobby: photography of weather phenomena and landscapes.
	Helge Tuschy (Germany, 1983; currently in Austria)
	Helge Tuschy (1983) is a student in Meteorology / Geophysics at the Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck, Austria. In 2002, he worked in the National Weather Service Amarillo, Texas for 3 weeks on the day-and night shifts including occasional chasings. In the spring of 2004, he visited the Storm Prediction Center ( SPC ) where he got the chance to work with a meteorologist on a tornado climatology project. 3 years later, in 2007, he visited the NWS of Amarillo, TX again where he worked for 3 weeks with a supervisor and he was also able to spend a day in the SPC where he was taught how to create an outlook. Helge participated in the ECSS 2007 in Trieste and he prepared numerous talks / presentations.
	Johannes Dahl (Germany, 1980)
	Johannes Dahl is currently pursuing his PhD degree at the German Aerospace Center, DLR, implementing a lightning parameterization in a mesoscale numerical model. Johannes is highly interested in the dynamics of rotating thunderstorms which also was the topic of his diploma thesis at the Free University of Berlin. Visits to the SPC and NSSL in Norman, Oklahoma, have strongly contributed to his desire to forecast severe convective storms across Europe. He attempts to merge theoretical knowledge with applied skills which is why, apart from forecasting aspects, he is strongly interested also in theoretical physics and theoretical meteorology.
	Christoph Gatzen (Germany, 1975)
	Christoph Gatzen has studied Meteorology in Cologne and at the Free University of Berlin, where he founded the "Berlin Weather Forecast Challenge" together with J. Hoffmann. He has been a lecturer for the weather discussion, and organized a successful initiative to continue weather observations at the WMO station 10381 Berlin-Dahlem. He has written his M.Sc. thesis at the German Weather Service (DWD) on "The impact of incremental digital filter initialisation on analysis fields of the GME". He has published the first case study about a derecho that occurred outside of the United States, while working at the German Aerospace Center. Currently, he is operational forecaster at MC-Wetter in Berlin.
	Oliver Schlenczek (Germany, 1985)
	Oliver Schlenczek studies meteorology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. He has participated in COPS (convective and orographically-induced precipitation study) in a mobile team for surface measurements and soundings. In 2007, Oliver prepared some presentations about severe weather in Germany and thunderstorm forecast. He is going to present a case study about the severe weather outbreak on July 29, 2005 at the Extreme Weather Congress in Hamburg on March 27, 2008.
	Tomas Pucik (Slovakia, 1987; currently in Czech Republic)
	Tomas is a student of Physical Geography at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech republic. He is employed part-time at the Regional Forecast Office of Czech HydroMeteorological Institute (CHMI). Tomas has a life-long interest in thunderstorms and the severe weather that accompany them, which is also the theme of his BSc thesis. Besides thunderstorms, he is also interested in winter storms and local mountainous climate conditions and anomalies.
	Marko Korosec (Slovenia, 1981)
	Marko Korosec studies Physics and Meteorology at the Faculty for Mathematics and Physics at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is employed at DARS d.d., where he works as a supervisor of road weather information system for Slovenian motorway network. In 2007, he has founded Skywarn Slovenia and is cooperates with Slovenian NMS for better understanding of severe weather across the country. Marko's main interest is in forecasting severe storms and the triggering of convection on pre-existing boundaries (e.g. drylines or other near-surface convergence lines). During the last few years, Marko has also contributed to a few meteorology conferences and prepared several presentations/case studies on severe weather across Slovenia. In his free time, Marko is also a storm chaser. He had numerous expeditions in Europe and United States. He shares his severe weather photographs on the website weather-photos.net.
Others members of ESTOFEX
	Charles (Chuck) Doswell III Senior Research Scientist CIMMS, University of Oklahoma Norman, Oklahoma United States of America Nick Verge United Kingdom Angel Dimitrov Bulgaria Ben Lankamp The Netherlands David Rýva Skywarn CzechoSlovakia Kolín Czech Republic Ernani Nascimento Professor of Meteorology Universidade Federal de Santa Maria Brazil Sébastien Poitevin France Harold Brooks Researcher National Severe Storms Laboratory Norman, Oklahoma United States of America Greg Stumpf Researcher National Severe Storms Laboratory Norman, Oklahoma United States of America Lionel Peyraud Meteorologist/researcher National Weather Service MeteoSwiss Geneva Switzerland Jim LaDue United States of America Ari-Juhani Punkka Meteorologist / researcher Finnish Meteorological Institute Helsinki Finland Jenni Teittinen Meteorologist / researcher Finnish Meteorological Institute Helsinki Finland Lars Lowinski Germany Bogdan Antonescu Romania Aurora Stan-Sion Romania Stuart Robinson UK Tornado forecasting and site investigations TORRO Leicestershire United Kingdom Jan Hoffmann Radar meteorologist Meteo Service weather research GmbH Berlin Germany

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