BAMOS Vol 30 No. 3 2017 | Page 8

8 BAMOS Sept 2017 News AMOS-Q matters Michael Hewson AMOS-Q, [email protected] (send me a line) AMOS-Q held a get-together at the Bureau of Meteorology’s Brisbane office on 12 June. Dr Joshua Soderholm of The University of Queensland’s Atmospheric Observations Research Group discussed his radar-derived thunderstorm climatology, the national radar data archive and now-casting applications for industry and single Doppler 2D winds (see below). It was a great chance for AMOS members and professionals to meet. Many thanks to Tamika Tihema, Katie Rosemond and Joshua for pulling it together. We will have another forum and get-together soon – details to be advertised. I’m hoping we can use technology to hook-up AMOS-Q members and interested affiliates across the state. We want to put the “Q” into AMOS-Q. Funded by Central Queensland University, I attended the AMOS 30th Anniversary Symposium in Melbourne last month. It was a very interesting forum—and a great opportunity to understand where the World Meteorological Organisation, The Royal Meteorological Society, the UK Met Office, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO are heading in terms of strategy, plans, systems, communication, data and challenges. The “big picture” writ large. And ... there were stories too… You will remember that your AMOS-Q committee sought expressions of interest from students to fund symposium attendance. Kathryn Turner went with your support—and I know Kathryn enjoyed the networking and the amazing speakers – more from Kathryn later … What amazed me about the forum, and other communication since, was to learn that there are Queensland resident members of AMOS who have, and are, making a great contribution to AMOS at large. I would like to leverage that regional knowledge as a collegiate body—and I would like to encourage our co- workers and wider colleagues and connections to join us as well. I want to acknowledge the leadership of Andrew Wiebe, our immediate past AMOS-Q Chair and co-convenor of the 2015 AMOS annual conference held in Brisbane. Andrew moves on from Katestone Pty Ltd to move his family back to Canada. Not only was Andrew a driving force behind weather model based products for agriculture, but Andrew held AMOS-Q together in recent years and I for one have enjoyed Andrew’s weather knowledge and entertaining store of skiing stories! We in AMOS-Q wish Andrew and his young family very well in colder climes.