Imagine a rotating sphere that is 12,800 kilometers in diameter, has a bumpy surface, is surrounded by a 40-km-deep mixture of gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and is heated, along with its surrounded gases, by a nuclear reactor 150 million kilometers away. Imagine that this sphere is also revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during one part of the revolution and other locations are heated during another part of the revolution. And imagine that this mixture of gases continually receives inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections. Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture, you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two or more days into the future. This is essentially the task encountered day to day by a weather forecaster.

On the difficulty of weather forecasting, Bob Ryan, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1982.

Stu has been fanatic about weather and climate for 30 years. “It’s something that’s in your blood”. 

Stu completed a Batchelor of Science Degree at Victoria University in 1991, and a Master of Science degree in Physical Geography at Victoria University in 2000. The thesis topic was “Nocturnal Cold Air Drainage in Complex Terrain, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand”.

In 2001, Stu headed to the United States on a science fellowship provided by Battelle, and spent 6 months working from the Pacific North-West National Laboratory near Richland, Washington. As part of the VINEX team he helped investigate the development of the nocturnal boundary layer over a local Washington Vineyard. After returning to New Zealand, Stu founded Microclimate New Zealand and continued to manage the business up until September 2009.

In 2005, Stu formed Climate Consulting Ltd, a business providing innovative frost forecasts to the Marlborough and Waipara wine regions. “I have a love hate relationship with frost forecasting, it’s a thrill when forecasts go to plan, but truly awful when they don’t.  Trying to predict what will happen in highly complex topographic environments is incredibly challenging”.

To improve on current forecasting methodologies, Stu enrolled as a PhD student at Canterbury University in March 2009 and has commenced research in frost prediction using the state of the art Modeling system called WRF (Weather and Research Forecasting model). The thesis topic is “Application of a Mesoscale Model (WRF) to Minimum Temperature Prediction in a Wine Growing Region, Marlborough, New Zealand”.

One of the objectives behind the research is to quantify the influence of synoptic scale wind systems on thermally generated winds in the Marlborough region. The effects are believed to be responsible for the wide and often under-predicted disparity in regional temperatures during frost events. Estimated completion for the research is 2012.