The fellows from the ITaRS network met between March 18th-20th 2015 in Barcelona, at UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya).
The two first days were dedicated to a course about writing skills. Two lecturers from WAS gave us tips and advice to understand the process of writing a scientific paper better. The fellows had to prepare an abstract for a possible article in order to receive direct feedback for improvement. The interactivity of the lectures made them very interesting. It is important to mention the powerful impact these advice can have on our future scientific publications.
The last day was devoted to data assimilation. Two researchers from ECMWF (Reading, UK) came to introduce this concept. They explained how observations are useful and important in order to increase the predictability of the weather forecasts. The lectures were very interesting and the quality of their content was at a very high scientific level.
We got the chance to visit some of the installations of UPC. We visited the building which houses the impressive supercomputer called MareNostrum (1 petaflop of speed!).
Finally, it was good to see again all the fellows. We managed to find time to discuss and speak about questions related to ITaRS. We also enjoyed this pretty city a bit.