3rd Tashkent Water Security Lectures (ONLINE)
On the 10th of December 2021, the third Tashkent Water Security Lectures (TWSL) were given one more time online over Zoom.
TWSL were initiated in December 2020 to contribute to knowledge transfer and the capacity development of water specialists in Central Asia, which was put on hold due to pandemic. And we continue to do so in the 3rd edition where the topic was “An Introduction to climate modelling, weather forecasting and data assimilation”.
3rd TWSL started with an opening note from Dr Abror Gafurov, who honoured Prof. Uktam Umurzakov who sadly left us this year. Prof. Uktam Umurzakov was a professor at Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers (TIIAME) in Uzbekistan, he was an essential part of the water research community in Central Asia and a great colleague and contributor to the previous TWSL.
Mr Ludwig Stroink, Head of International Department at the German Research Institute (GFZ) gave an opening speech and stated the importance of the research in Central Asia and the collaboration in the region. He was followed by the Vice-rector of TIIAME, Prof. Tohir Sultanov who also commemorate late Prof. Uktam Umurzakov.
The main program started with a lecture from Dr Bijan Fallah, who is working in the Green Central Asia project at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and is developing open access, high-resolution climate change projections data-sets, specifically for the region of Central Asia. His talk was titled “Climate Change in Central Asia”, and it gave us an insight into climate models and climate projections in Central Asia.
The second talk was given by Dr Walter Acavedo, a data scientist with a strong background in machine learning, software engineering, weather/climate and collaborative leadership from the German Meteorological Service (Deutscher Wetterdienst). Dr Acavedo gave a talk on “Inverse Climate Modelling” where he, among other things, explained what is the difference between weather forecasting, climate prediction and climate projection and, if models are useful to understand the climate system.
Both talks are available in pdf and video recording format here.
To join us next year for another edition of Tashkent Water Security Lectures, follow our event page where we will announce upcoming events.