Skip to content

Meet our Experts: Lu Li

Lu is a Hydrologist at NORCE. She is an expert in Hydrological and regional hydrometeorological modelling and is involved in work package 2 in CONFER, where she works in the hydrological modelling group. 

Tell me a bit about your role at NORCE 

I’m a hydrological modeller and I started in NORCE in 2013 in a group of regional climate modelling and climate services. Before I moved to Bergen, I was already interested in and worked in hydrological impacts and water resources availability under climate change in Africa when I was a postdoc at the University of Oslo.  In NORCE, my main research interest is to address issues of water availability, hydrological extremes/hazards, and impacts under climate change by all types of hydrological models (including both lumped and distributed, conceptual and physical hydrological models). Over the past ten years, I focused on studies listed as, for example, the investigation of water resources changes under warming climate by large-scale hydrological modelling in China and (southern) Africa; glacier retreat and hydrological impacts under climate change over glacier basins in Himalaya region and western Norway;  Flood changes from last millennium to future in southern Norway; hydrological modelling and seasonal hydrological forecast in Eastern Africa (CONFER).

Why are you excited about the CONFER project and what do you think it could achieve?

I’m excited about CONFER project is that my expertise and work can contribute to a better seasonal hydrological forecast in the region and have a good impact on local people. Besides, I’m also excited to work in a hydrological modelling team with colleagues from KIT, who I first met in 2014 at the first WRF-Hydro workshop in Cosenza (Italy), as well as colleagues from ICPAC, who can link scientific improvement to the operational system in the region. I think CONFER could achieve a better seasonal forecast in the region which can actually improve the life of local people. This is what I’m so proud of being part of CONFER.

What is your specific role in CONFER?

My work is the hydrological modelling in work package 2. As I mentioned earlier, I’m together with colleagues from KIT and ICPAC working on a cutting-edge dynamical hydrometeorological modelling system called WRF-Hydro. We aim to get a better seasonal hydrological forecast at a very high resolution of hundred meters in local basins, which will provide detailed information on streamflow/flood risk in the region. This will be carried out in a collaboration with the atmospheric group in CONFER, where we will get a more reliable model forcing data. We also try to understand the impacts of lakes and reservoirs in downstream discharge and implement them in our hydrological modelling. In this part of the work, the remotely sensed earth observation data are especially critical for model calibration and validation due to the scarcity of ground observation data in the region. We will collaborate with remote sensing colleagues in CONFER.