Based on initial discussion here are draft objectives for 2026:

  1. introduce and evaluate irrigation driven by monthly activation maps
  2. intruduce and evaluate CaMa-Flood inundation flux 
  3. introduce and evaluate runoff and infiltration fixes
  4. develop an hydrological calibration suite and explore the use of AI emulators
  5. contribute to CAMS-RD proposal for enhance land carbon/vegetation modelling


2025:

  1. test water extent by CaMa-Flood interaction with subgrid Open-Water (Flake).
    1. I have successfully implemented and tested in the dynamical open water for the IFS and evaluated it on a number of flood cases in the period 2016-2026
    2. I have developed a new flooded area extent benchmarking using GFM and VIIRS data and this confirmed good performance in simulating large floods.
  2. experiment on the shallow-water vertical exchange with focus on water and energy (eg. wet soil after inundation or lake retract, re-evaporation)
    1. The lake model miminum depth has been tested reducing to 0.5m without numerical instabilities.
    2. I have developed the 2-way coupling for CaMa-Flood within the IFS allowing re-evaporation from inundated areas.
    3. An infiltration flux has been tested first in the context of irrigation as a step towards considering flooded water reinfiltration.
    4. I have implemented the irrigation process in offline, forecast, and analysis proving significant positive impact on weather forecast scores.
  3. investigate the runoff generation spottiness with link to daily report case studies.
    1. The runoff spots have been understood and link with deep soil layer freezing.
    2. A modified infiltration has been shown to mitigate the runoff issue with neutral impact on meteorology and it is already included in 49r3.
  4. collaborate with Jasper on the orographic runoff generation sensitivity 
    1. A revision of the orographic runoff based on conserving the surface runoff fraction across resolutions has been implemented with positive impact on DestinE river discharge simulations.
  5. collaborate with Souhail/Gabriele/Francesca on the 9-layer sensitivities to hydrological changes
    1. This development has been deprioritised in agreement with my line manager
  6. collaborate with Patricia on the investigation of Africa drought motivating the OPER vs ERA5 differences
    1. The difference in soil moisture has been understood and attributed to the change of vegetation cover since 49r1.
    2. Preliminary work towards infiltration capping to mitigate the risk of hydrophobic soils.