Warmer Oceans Are Changing the Season for Harmful Algal Blooms

The next BCCR Monday Seminar will be given by Tamas Bodai from the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He will present his work on "Enhanced El Niño predictability from climate mode interactions". The seminar will take place in the usual BCCR seminar room (4th floor of the West wing) at 11:00. Abstract The conceptual XRO model (XROM) introduced recently by Zhao et al. (Nature, 2024) has been extended by including state dependence of the external noise forcing on ENSO as well as a seasonal modulation of both the additive and state-dependent parts of the forcing. These features of the forecast model, the XDROM+, require the use of Maximum Likelihood Estimation for parameter inference, which is much more costly than fitting the XROM to data by linear regression via matrix inversion. Yet, it pays, yielding the best ENSO forecast skill yet. In the talk, I will also make a few points of caveat via introducing and discussing four concepts, those of the apparent, theoretical maximum, climatological, and true prediction skills. Most importantly, I explain that (i) the true skill—unlike the apparent skill determined from historical data—cannot be defined by a correlation coefficient and demonstrate that (ii) the said two types of skill do not correlate across possible realisations of the statistical process generated by the XDROM+. https://rdcu.be/exnN4 Speaker information Short biography Tamas Bodai Graduated as a mechanical engineer, with a keen interest in mathematics, I’m now doing research into climate change. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamas-bodai-65236261/

The program will be announced in due time. Please mark your calendars!

The Bjerknes Proposal Writing Class (Bjerknes proposal writing training 2) is an offer to scientists at the Bjerknes Centre who plan to submit a project proposal in 2026 and have little or no experience yet in proposal writing. By taking the class, you will consecutively develop your idea into a proposal draft and finally, a complete proposal ready to submit within the deadlines of 2026. This writing class will complement the support you get from your academic supervisor or scientific mentor but cannot replace that kind of support. Lectures online on zoom. Link to all the lectures: (will follow) Link to the special seminar: (will follow) Link to all teaching material: (will follow) Class format and time effort: Weekly alternating lectures and writing seminars Lecture-sessions consist of 1 hour lecture + up to 30 minutes question/discussion online: background and guidelines for a specific proposal aspect, instructions for specific remote work on your proposal; Writing sessions consist of 1 hour writing on-site: perform remote work, present results and get feedback. Remote work: 1-2 hours/week remote work on your proposal (in addition to writing seminars) To be performed by the next class Individual meetings with assigned adviser and/or scientific mentor on demand You will get individual written feedback on your remote work from your assigned adviser Imperfect and tentative individual work is better than no remote work!