Bjerknes Centre

Whoops, somehow I let too much time go by without an update. Considering I've been here for three and a half weeks and nearly 100% of my posts have been about what I do in my free time, I figure I should mention the work I've been doing. You know, the reason I'm in Norway in the first place.

This summer I'm fortunate to be interning at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. The Bjerknes Centre, a Norwegian Centre of Excellence, is part of the University of Bergen and is associated with the Geophysical Institute. The group that I'm a part of works with climate models. The specific project that I'm focusing on is called RiskChange and it's concerned with Scandinavia and the future implications of climate change. Specifically we're looking into Copenhagen, Oslo, and Bergen. My part of the project is to validate the model. To do this, I will be comparing observational data from various meteorological stations around Norway and Denmark to output from the climate model. The idea behind this is that if the model does a poor job reconstructing the past (called a hindcast because it's basically a forecast for what has already happened), then its projections for the future should not be taken too seriously. Ideally the model's results will look somewhat similar to the actual observations, which indicates that the model should do a good job predicting the future. The climate model just finished running, so I'll start looking at the data over the next few days.

After almost a month here, I've gotta say that my favorite part of the Bjerknes Centre is the people. The researcher that helped me get over here is Stefan and he's really nice. Which is a good thing considering I'm invading his office for the summer. Plus he's American and he spent a year at UNC as a postdoc, so we've got a common background. Everyone else has been really welcoming as well.  There are people here from all over the world (and from Norway, of course), so it's cool to hear so many accents in one place.  Plus, the Bjerknes Centre seems to do a great job pulling in professors and researchers from BLANK universities to give talks in the weekly seminars.  I've really enjoyed those so far.  This week there is a professor visiting from University of Washington, which is where I'm considering applying for grad school, so I'm definitely going to try to get a brief meeting with him.

Below are a couple of photos of my building.  I think it's nice, both from the outside and inside.  Sadly there's construction on the first floor, which is so loud and tends to vibrate the whole building.  I suppose all the crashing gives me something to listen to.  Plus I must admit that I'm slightly jealous of the workers who are smashing down the walls below me.  I mean, who wouldn't want to sledgehammer something?

 The Geophysical Institute/Bjerknes Centre.  A view from the street.

My side of the building.  I'm on the third floor!