Shiwam Singh

About

I am a PhD researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation and Management, IIT Roorkee, in the Weather and Climate Research Group led by Dr. Piyush Srivastava. My thesis is on how numerical weather prediction models represent the surface and boundary layer over mountains.

Most of my days go between two kinds of data. One is high-frequency turbulence measurements from a flux tower in the Central Himalaya. The other is output from the WRF model, which I run at kilometre resolution over Uttarakhand and the wider Northwest Himalaya. I use the tower data to check how well the model computes the exchange of heat and momentum at the ground over steep terrain, and to find out why it goes wrong when it does.

I came to atmospheric science from pure mathematics. My master's projects at IIT Hyderabad were on the Riemann-Roch theorem for function fields and on arcs in finite projective spaces. That training helps in modelling. A parameterization scheme is a set of differential equations with closure assumptions, and I prefer to read and check those myself instead of only changing model settings.

Alongside the thesis I contribute the atmospheric modelling to group studies of extreme rainfall, landslides and urban heat stress, including the July 2024 Wayanad landslide.

Position
PhD researcher, since July 2023
Group
Weather and Climate Research Group, CoEDMM
Supervisor
Dr. Piyush Srivastava
Based in
Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
Shiwam Singh, smiling, in a white shirt with trees behind him
Cloud clinging to forested mountain slopes on a clear morning
The Central Himalaya, where the measurements I work with are made.Uttarakhand, India
Newest first

Education

  1. Ph.D., Disaster Mitigation and Management

    Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Thesis: On improved representation of mountain boundary and surface layer processes in the numerical weather prediction model.

  2. M.Sc., Mathematics

    Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. Projects on the Riemann-Roch theorem for function fields (July to December 2021) and on arcs in finite projective spaces, with links to maximum distance separable codes (January to June 2022).

  3. B.Sc., Mathematics

    Kisan P.G. College, Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, Ayodhya.

Research positions

Experience

  1. Doctoral researcher, CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee

    Surface layer parameterization and boundary layer modelling over complex terrain. Source-level changes to WRF surface layer routines in Fortran, eddy covariance processing, and model evaluation with correlation, mean bias, MAE, RMSE and index of agreement.

  2. Junior Research Fellow, CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee

    Project on improved representation of surface layer parameterizations in the Weather Research and Forecasting model. This work led directly into the doctoral research.

Tools and training

Skills

Models

WRF-ARWWRF-UCMWRF-ChemRegCMWPS and nested domains

Programming

PythonFortranMATLABRC++Linux and HPCLaTeX

Methods

Monin-Obukhov similarity theoryEddy covariancePBL scheme evaluationReanalysis validationData assimilationNetCDF workflows

Graphics and GIS

matplotlibGrADSNcviewArcGISERDAS ImagineOriginPro

Mathematics coursework

Real, complex, functional and numerical analysis. Ordinary and partial differential equations. Probability. Linear algebra, groups, rings, fields and modules, algebraic geometry, number theory and algebraic coding theory.

Disaster management coursework

Vulnerability and risk analysis, landslide hazard assessment and mitigation, remote sensing and GIS, geospatial data for disaster mitigation.

National examinations

Qualified GATE in 2022 and 2023, and JAM in 2019 and 2020.