The formal MPE CDT programme has now to come to end. Our final event was held at Imperial College on 30 September. It was a very enjoyable day and we were delighted to be joined by so many former MPE students and staff. It was great to hear what everyone is doing and a wonderful opportunity to see people who, in some cases, had not met up in person since before the first lockdown.

Several of the MPE former students gave updates on their careers since they graduated from the CDT.

The afternoon was devoted to roundtable discussion groups that focussed on reviewing the students’ experiences of being a part of the MPE CDT and on looking forward to a future bid for a new CDT. It was great to hear how much the students had enjoyed and gained from their time at Imperial College and the University of Reading, and to obtain ideas and suggestions from both staff and former students that we will incorporate into the next CDT bid.

We all vowed to keep in touch in future and will be issuing news about how we will do this soon…..

The Demonstrator was made by Professor Onno Bokhove as part of the Data Assimilation for the REsilient City (DARE) research project and network funded by an EPSRC Senior Fellowship in Digital Technology for Living with Environmental Change. https://research.reading.ac.uk/dare/

Professor Bokhove said:
“Over the last 8 years I have had the pleasure to heavily interact with students and staff of the Mathematics of Planet Earth Centre for Doctoral Training (MPE CDT) on the mathematics and numerics of geophysical and environmental fluid dynamics, with applications in flooding, wave-energy and extreme water waves at sea. I have enjoyed reading CDT students’ reports as external examiner and facing critical questions in the various seminars given for the MPE CDT. In addition, whilst not on call to check on Wetropolis during the MPE exhibition, I loved exploring the river-scape of London’s Thames from Hammersmith to the Thames Barrier. Pondering how to make an urban-estuary version of Wetropolis in which river floods meet a tidal storm surge.” 

The video of the “Exploring Wetropolis, an extreme rainfall and flood demonstrator”, part of Reading’s DARE project and featuring Oliver Phillips (MPE CDT PhD student) and Onno, underscores the fruitful collaborations between the Universities of Leeds and Reading and Imperial College London:

The video can be viewed here:

To this end, the workshop will focus on two main themes:

• Turbulence on day 1 
• Dynamics and Transfer Operator Theory on day 2 .  

Topics of the conference include:

• Out-of-equilibrium dynamics
• Spatio-temporal chaos
• Periodic Orbit Theory
• Critical transitions (tipping points) in high-dimensional systems
• Rare, extreme and persistent events and large deviations.

This conference to be in-person and there will also be the opportunity to register for online attendance. 

The conference will include poster sessions and social events. Applications are particularly encouraged from early career researchers and PhD students.

More information, including details about registration, are here.

Geophysical fluid dynamics; from mathematical theory to operational prediction

at University of Reading

A month-long programme of talks, activities and workshops

A better understanding of the climate system is of great societal relevance, due to the importance of reliable environmental forecasts and the looming climate crisis. Recent scientific progress ranges from improving operational forecasting systems to abstract results on infinite dynamical systems. it is of vital importance to bring theses insights together in a proper interdisciplinary environment, which this programme aims to provide. With a focus on the fluid dynamical components of the climate system, practitioners will learn from mathematicians and statisticians about new tools and techniques to analyse these, while at the same time interesting new challenges for the mathematical community will emerge. The programme will address questions relating to geophysical fluid dynamics and forecasting, such as qualitative and statistical behaviour of geophysical models, response to deterministic and stochastic perturbations, sources of predictability at different spatial and temporal scales, forecast verification, and data assimilation. We will be taking both mathematical and statistical perspectives as well as applied and operational perspectives at the same time.

Full details, including how to take part, are here: here.

This year the chapter conference is happening in person again (fingers crossed), and in addition to three senior speakers we will also host student speakers, so if you want to take the chance and present your work at this year’s conference, feel free to fill out the form or contact us personally.

Full details and information on how to register are here: https://www.reading.ac.uk/maths/siamstudentchapter/

Speakers for the Symposium include: Alberto Naveira Garabato (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton), Marilena Oltmanns (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton), Wei Pan (ICL), Pauline Tedesco (ICL), Matthew Crowe (University College London) and Laura Cimoli (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego).

Please note: talks will take place at Room Huxley 340 at Imperial College and a welcome lunch at 170 Queen’s Gate. There will be also be a social BBQ dinner for MPE staff, students and invited guests after at 170 Queen’s Gate.

Please register for the event and lunch through this link here by 9th May.

Please download the flyer here.

• Event attribution

• Trend attribution

• Philosophical issues in attribution

• Causality

• Decision-making

The school is primarily aimed at MPE CDT graduate students but is open to a wider audience of scientists and scholars in mathematics and weather and climate science, including climate services. Scheduled activities are expected to occur between 10am and 5pm UK time, and will occur entirely online. The provisional schedule of lectures and practical sessions can be downloaded here. A more detailed syllabus, together with suggested background reading, will be provided later.

The lectures and practical sessions will be delivered by leading experts, including Aglaé Jézéquel (LMD/IPSL), Sebastian Sippel (ETH Zürich), Elisabeth Lloyd (Indiana), Marlene Kretschmer (Reading), Elena Saggioro (Reading), Dragana Bojovic (BSC), Raül Marcos (BSC), and Marta Terrado (BSC).

The school is co-sponsored by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) through its Lighthouse Activity ‘My Climate Risk’, and by the Walker Institute.

In order to benefit from the school, participants should have some basic background in weather and climate science, some knowledge of common statistical practices such as regression and uncertainty quantification, and some experience in scientific programming with either python or R.

We ask potential participants to indicate their interest by May 2nd, by completing this form. Successful applicants will be informed by Mid May and provided with joining information.

SYLLABUS FOR THE SCHOOL

MONDAY JUNE 6

Event attribution Aglaé Jézéquel 

Concepts of extreme event attribution :

• How do we define the event?
• Counterfactual and factual worlds
• Storyline and risk-based approach
• Attributing impacts related to extreme events
• Compound events attribution

Trend attribution I Sebastian Sippel 

Concepts of detection and attribution for long-term trends:

• Detection: Is there a change?
• Attribution: What is the reason for the change?
• Internal variability vs. forced response
• Separation of (forced) signal and noise
• Climate models as physics-based tools to identify an expected change signal (which observational changes will be tested against)  
• “Fingerprinting” of individual forcings (in spatial, temporal, vertical and/or multi-variate climate patterns) and traditional attribution “recipe”
• Key attribution results (e.g., from IPCC AR6 WG1)

Logic of model confirmation Lisa Lloyd

• Varieties of ways that models might be supported
• Fit
• Variety of Fit
• Independent support for aspects of the model
• Variety of independent support
• Robustness
  

Role of values in attribution Lisa Lloyd 

• Why values are always there
• Why that is not bad
• How to use values to help good science
• Tradeoffs of values in scientific investigation and practice

TUESDAY JUNE 7

Practical session on event attribution Aglaé Jézéquel 

Simple case study of EEA – calculation of a risk ratio

Causality I Marlene Kretschmer 

• Causal questions in climate science with a focus on teleconnections
• Association vs. causation
• The concept of causality in statistics: quantifying causal relationships from (observed) data
• Using causal networks to express scientific hypotheses
• Examples from climate science: common drivers, mediating pathways, direct and indirect effects, linear and non-linear causal effects

Trend attribution II Sebastian Sippel 

“New approaches” to detection and attribution (e.g., at regional scales):

• Dynamical adjustment: Separation of thermodynamical vs. dynamical trends as a tool to assess causes of regional-scale trends
• Statistical learning approaches to identify (forced) signals from climate patterns (e.g., pattern filtering, infilling, and/or pattern recognition, …)

WEDNESDAY JUNE 8

Practical session on causality Elena Saggioro 

Set of exercises on simple causal network structures and associated potential statistical pitfalls: common driver, mediators, indirect pathways, blocking pathways and non-linear causal effects.

THURSDAY JUNE 9

Causality II Marlene Kretschmer 

• Conditioning on a common effect: an example from climate science
• Particular challenges and opportunities in the use of causal networks in scientific practice
• Outlook: causal discovery
  

Decision-making Aglaé Jézéquel 

• How do we interact with stakeholders as climate scientists ?
• Interdisciplinarity with social sciences 
• Climate services : definitions, objectives and limits
• Case study of extreme event attribution as a climate service

Practical session on decision-making Raül Marcos, Marta Terrado and Dragana Bojovic

• A journey from climate information to decision-making: a tale of two worlds?

FRIDAY JUNE 10

Decision-making I: Knowledge coproduction  Dragana Bojovic

• Decision-making for climate change adaptation
• Involving stakeholders in decision-making
• Participatory methods 
• Climate services and need for transdisciplinary approaches
  

Decision-making II: Success story Marta Terrado 

• Coproduction of a climate service with a wine sector user 
• MED-GOLD Dashboard: a decision-making tool for the wine sector (different time scales: historical, seasonal, projections) 
• Translating skill to economic value, hit rate of the prediction: the weather roulette 
  

Lecturers and Support Specialists – Biographies

Dragana Bojovic is a senior researcher at Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Earth Science Department, where she co-leads the Knowledge integration team. She applies interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to improve climate knowledge and coproduce climate services. She has been collaborating with scientists, policymakers, and communities from different parts of the world, supporting knowledge exchange to enhance resilience to climate and other environmental changes. She holds a PhD in Science and Management of Climate Change (Ca’Foscari University of Venice) and a MSc in Environmental Change and Management (Oxford University). 

Aglaé Jézéquel is a researcher working at LMD in Paris. Her research interests include extreme event attribution, storylines, and climate services. Her work is interdisciplinary, between statistics of climate data and social sciences. She also teaches several classes at masters level, including a creative writing workshop on climate change in collaboration with a French writer.

Marlene Kretschmer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Reading. Before that she worked at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany where she received her PhD in climate physics. Her research focuses on identifying the large-scale atmospheric drivers of extreme weather and climate events, including dynamical stratosphere-troposphere coupling and its impacts for winter circulation and extremes. To address these issues, she is particularly interested in applying causal inference-based frameworks as well as novel statistical approaches from machine learning such as causal discovery algorithms.  Moreover, she is keen on applying these new techniques to evaluate teleconnection processes in climate models and to improve sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecasting of extreme events.

Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science working on models in science and their confirmation in evolutionary biology, started studying climate science and how it uses models in 2005. Since then, she has worked on a variety of key issues involving modeling questions, including model confirmation and model application in the context of attribution, and is especially interested in the development of attribution methods and the social values they hold. She has held faculty positions at University of California, Berkeley, and is now a Distinguished Professor at the specialty department in her field at Indiana University. A few weeks ago she found out she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Raül Marcos-Matamoros is a Serra Húnter lecturer in Meteorology at the Barcelona University and a fellow researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) – Earth Science Department. In the BSC he collaborates with the Climate Services team where he is involved in the verification of seasonal prediction models and the development of climate services in different sectors (agriculture, forest fire prevention, water resources and renewable energies). He also works in the interaction with stakeholders to promote the integration of climate predictions in their decision-making workflows. He holds a PhD in Physics (University of Barcelona) and a MsC in Meteorology. 

Elena Saggioro is an interdisciplinary research fellow at the Walker Institute, and is completing her PhD in Mathematics of Planet Earth at the University of Reading. Her PhD research focused on applying a range of causal and Bayesian network methods to understanding the Southern Hemisphere stratosphere-troposphere coupling and its role in extending the predictability of large-scale tropospheric circulation variability. At the Walker Institute, she is exploring how causality and climate storylines can help in climate risk assessment and climate adaptation planning. Her work involves close engagement with a range of stakeholders, including national governments and public bodies in the UK and overseas.

Sebastian Sippel’s key research interests include improving understanding of climate variability, extremes, and their changes at global and regional scales, including land-atmosphere interactions and changes in ecosystem carbon cycling. Sebastian uses statistical learning techniques with a focus on identifying forced changes and internally generated variability. Sebastian works as a Senior Scientist (“Oberassistent”) and Lecturer in the Climate Physics group at ETH Zurich. Sebastian’s PhD research was on “Climate extremes and their impact on ecosystem-atmosphere interactions” at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany. Before that, he studied environmental sciences with a focus on environmental physics at Bayreuth University, Germany; with a year abroad in Oxford with studies on Environmental Change and Management.

Marta Terrado is a senior researcher and science communicator at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Earth Sciences department, where she co-leads the Knowledge Integration team. Applying various communication and dissemination tools and activities, she facilitates knowledge and technology exchange on climate services and air quality services to stakeholders from different sectors and governance levels to support their adaptation to climate change. She is an Environmental Scientist with a PhD in Earth Sciences (University of Barcelona), a MSc in Geographical Information Systems and a Postgraduate Degree in Science Communication.

Timetable

BSC Team = Dragana Bojovic, Raül Marcos, Marta Terrado

NOW THAT THIS CONFERENCE HAS TAKEN PLACE – WE WOULD LIKE TO CONGRATULATE ALL THE SPEAKERS AND ORGANISERS FOR A BRILLIANT CONFERENCE.

THE AWARDS FOR THE BEST EARLY CAREER TALKS – SELECTED BY SECRET BALLOT DURING THE CONFERENCE – WERE GIVEN TO ERIN RUSSELL AND CATHIE WELLS

COPIES OF ALL OF THE PRESENTATIONS HAVE BEEN UPLOADED BELOW:

To coincide with the International Celebration of Women in Mathematics, the London Mathematical Society, the Mathematics of Planet Earth CDT and the University of Reading presented a day with invited guest speakers:

• Renee Hoekzema (Postdoctoral Researcher, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford)
• Hua Lu (Research Scientist, Atmosphere Ice and Climate, the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge)
• Celine Maistret (Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, School of Mathematics, University of Bristol)
• Almut Veraart (Professor of Statistics, Imperial College London)
• plus posters and talks from Early Career Mathematicians.

The hosts of the meeting were Jennifer Scott (Professor of Mathematics at University of Reading and Director at Reading, of the Mathematics of Planet Earth Centre for Doctoral Training); and Rachel Newton (Reader in Number Theory and Future Leaders Fellow, King’s College London).

This celebration of Women in Mathematics event is sponsored by the London Mathematical Society and the EPSRC Mathematics of Planet Earth Centre for Doctoral Training and was a hybrid event, free of charge.

Although celebrating Women in Mathematics, EVERYONE WAS WELCOME TO ATTEND (including undergraduate students) and the talks were aimed at those with an interest in mathematics.

Venue: Edith Morley Van Emden Theatre, Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading – directions available here.

INVITED SPEAKERS:

Renee Hoekzema

Dr Renee Hoekzema is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. Her research spans fundamental problems in topology such as describing manifold invariants, and applications of topology to biomedicine, palaeontology, and physics.

Renee grew up in the Netherlands where she obtained a double MSc degree in mathematics and theoretical physics from Utrecht University. She also completed a minor degree in palaeobiology and continued to do two subsequent DPhil’s at the University of Oxford, one in palaeontology and one in algebraic topology. After this varied education she continued as a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics at the University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, before returning to Oxford as a postdoctoral research associate studying both topology and its applications to bioscience. She holds a Veni Fellowship in the Netherlands combining mathematics and its applications.

Hua Lu is a research scientist in the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). She researches atmospheric dynamics, temperature trends and extreme weather in the Antarctic, and solar influences on atmospheric circulation. She is currently working on a NERC-funded multi-centre project: North Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) to investigate influence of the upper atmosphere on changes that occur across the North Atlantic and examine how those changes may affect the UK’s climate and weather.

Céline Maistret works in Number Theory, mainly studying the arithmetic of abelian varieties, with interest toward computations related to the parity conjecture and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.   She received her PhD from the University of Warwick in 2017 and was a research associate at the University of Bristol before joining Boston University as a postdoctoral faculty fellow. Since January 2021, she is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at the University of Bristol.

Almut Veraart is Professor of Statistics at Imperial College London, where she is also leading the Quantitative Sciences Research Institute. Her research focuses on developing statistical tools for a wide range of stochastic processes and (spatio-temporal) random fields and on tackling applications in finance, energy systems and environmental sciences. She grew up in Germany and obtained a “Diplom” in Mathematics and Economics and a “Diplom” in Mathematics from the University of Ulm. She also holds an MSc in Applied Statistics and a DPhil in Statistics from the University of Oxford where here studies were supported by a Rhodes Scholarship. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher and later assistant professor at the Centre for Research in Econometric Analysis of Time Series (CREATES) at Aarhus University in Denmark, before being appointed at the Department of Mathematics at Imperial in 2011. She held visiting research fellowships at Aarhus University, the University of Oslo, the Wolfgang Pauli Institute in Vienna and at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. Her research has been supported by the European Commission, by the Lloyds Register Foundation – Turing Programme on Data Centric Engineering and by EDF.

Programme and Presentations:

Here are post-conference copies of the presentations given:

10.55   Welcoming remarks, Jennifer Scott, Professor and Director at Reading, Mathematics of Planet Earth Centre for Doctoral Training

11.05   Invited Talk: Almut Veraart, Professor of Statistics, Imperial College London

Title: My journey into academia and A short introduction to Ambit Stochastics

Abstract: In this talk I am going to describe my journey into academia and give a short, non-technical introduction to the area of Ambit Stochastics.
The term Ambit Stochastics indicates a broad field of mathematical research with applications in a wide range of subject areas belonging to natural science, economics, and biology/medicine. Key examples of applications are to the modelling of turbulent flows, the modelling of financial energy markets and the modelling of biological growth. Ambit Stochastics deals with the study of random objects whose properties depend on time and spatial position (or any other type of variables). The variability in space and time is controlled through specific regions in space and time, the so-called ambit sets, and encompasses additional basic stochastic variation, the so-called intermittency/volatility. This approach is very general and comprises the basic idea of a causality cone in the past that is fundamental in physics. Accordingly, Ambit Stochastics has the potential to be applied in many fields of sciences where the variability at a certain point can be partly traced back to what happened in a region associated to this point. The initialising example for the application of Ambit Stochastics to real phenomena is turbulence. Over the past few years, a unifying modelling framework has been developed that is able to capture the main stylised features of turbulent flows. The mathematical research in this direction has matured to a stage where more extensive data acquisition, analysis and comparison is called for. This constitutes an exciting interplay between theory and experiment, typical for the development of the whole field of Ambit Stochastics.

11.40   Comfort Break

11.55   Invited Talk: Céline Maistret, Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, School of Maths, University of Bristol

Title: Elliptic curves and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

Abstract:  Number theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with studying numbers and solving equations. This talk will address the latter by introducing a particular set of equations which define objects called elliptic curves. Solving these equations has proven extremely difficult due to their complex mathematical structure. The quest for their solutions started over a century ago and reached a milestone in the 1960’s when Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer proposed a formula to find all their solutions. In this talk, I will present the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture and explain how it allows to find all solutions. 

12.30   Poster Blitz (1 slide introductions for each poster)

12.45   Lunch and poster session

Ruth Chapman, University of Exeter: Stochastic data adapted Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation box models

Lily Greig, University of Reading: Comparison of a simplified ERSEM to a full complexity model for the North-West European Shelf

Yu Kuang, non-affiliated: The Hermitian-Galois Module Structure of the Square Root

Evelyn Lira-Torres, Queen Mary University of London: Quantum Gravity and Riemannian Geometry on the Fuzzy Square

Marica Minucci, Queen Mary University of London: The Maxwell-Scalar Field System Near Spatial Infinity

Cathie Wells, University of Reading: Re-routing Transatlantic Flights to reduce CO2 Emissions:

13.50   Invited Talk: Hua Lu, Research Scientist (Atmosphere Ice and Climate), British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge

Title: How Maths Helped One to Become a Polar Researcher

Abstract: In this talk, I shall take you with me to go through my journey from a mathematician to a polar researcher. I will share with you the fun and cool moments being a research mathematician who uses equations, data, and statistics to tackle real world problems. I shall explain how maths has helped me to overcome challenges of having to move from one research field to another. I shall give you examples of why maths has formed the corner stone of my multi-disciplinary research. Because the environment topics that we face now-a-days so complex, dispersed and infused into various other disciplinary courses, I shall use my own experiences to demonstrate the value of working with people from different background and with different research expertise to ensure successful collaboration and project delivery.

14.25   Early Career Talks (3 x 15 minutes each):

Swinda Falkena, University of Reading: A Bayesian Approach to Regime Assignment

Lea Oljaca, University of Exeter: Measure and Statistical Attractors for nonautonomous Dynamical Systems

Farhana Pramy, The Open University: Properties of the Eigenfunctions of the SFS Operator with \alpha=0

15.10   Refreshment Break

15.25   Early Career Talks (2 x 15 minutes each)

Silvia Rognone, Queen Mary University of London: Characterisation of structures emerging from Random Colouring Processes on a Spatial Graph.

Erin Russell, University of Bristol: Playing with Fire: The Necessary Evil of Self-organized Criticality

15.55 Vote for best Early Career Presenter

16.00   Invited Talk: Renee Hoekzema, Postdoctoral Researcher, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

Title: Cutting and pasting in the 21^st century

Abstract: Scissor’s congruence is a classical setup in mathematics that featured in one of Hilbert’s problems in 1900. It asks whether two polytopes can be obtained from one another through a process of cutting and pasting. In the 1970s this question was posed instead for smooth manifolds: which manifolds A and B can be related to one another by cutting A into pieces and gluing them back together to get B? Manifold cut-and-paste invariants describe when this is possible. In this talk I introduce this these ideas and describe recent work that ‘upgrades’ cut-and-paste invariants to spaces using the machinery from algebraic K-theory. This is joint work with Mona Merling, Laura Murray, Carmen Rovi and Julia Semikina.

16.35   Closing remarks – here are two more conferences coming up:

Congratulations to all the speakers for a brilliant conference. The awards for the best Early Career Talks were given to Erin Russell and Cathie Wells.

On behalf of  MPE CDT, we are pleased to announce the Mathematics of Planet Earth’ Exhibition 2022. We warmly invite you to visit the ‘Mathematics of Planet Earth’ Exhibition, which will be displayed in the main entrance of Imperial’s South Kensington Campus, between Saturday 28th May – Sunday 5th June 2022.

Free entry – all welcome!

About the exhibition

Mathematics of Planet Earth is an international exhibition displaying exhibits, videos and computer programs illustrating how mathematics plays a role in answering essential questions that concern our planet. Through a series of graphics, visualisations and hands-on experiments you will discover the contributions that mathematics makes to topics such as astronomy, fluid dynamics, seismology, glaciology and cartography. The MPE CDT will provide a number of activities and tours available for families and children of all ages.

Download the Exhibition booklet here.

Download the flyer here.

Please see below links for the MPE Exhibition 2020 and News Article :

• MPE Exhibition 2020
• News on MPE Exhibition 2020

Opening event

• Date: Saturday, 28 May 2022
• Time: 12:30 hrs
• Location: Imperial College Main Entrance, Exhibition Road, South Kensington Campus, SW7 2AZ

Guided tours

Hour-long guided tours run each day of the exhibition (apart from Saturday 28 May when the exhibition opens at 12.30). Guided tours are offered on the hour starting at 10.00am and are limited to 15 guests at a time; the last tour commences at 17.00. To book a tour, please email the MPE CDT.

Public lectures

The MPE Exhibition programme also includes a public lecture , featuring an outstanding and fascinating talk.

Date: Monday, 30th May 2022
Time: 16:00
Venue: ICCL402, EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training Suite on Level 4N
Speaker: Prof Peter Lynch (An Irish meteorologist, mathematician, blogger and book author, University College Dublin)
Title: The Origins of Computer Weather and Climate Prediction: Fulfilment of Richardson’s Dream

Abstract:
Over the past few decades, weather forecasts have become impressively accurate. Forecast failures are rare and evoke strong reaction in the media. Climate prediction is still fraught with uncertainty, but great progress is under way.

The basic principles of numerical prediction and climate modelling were established long before electronic computers were available. Just one hundred years ago, Lewis Fry Richardson published his great work “Weather Prediction by Numerical Process”. The algorithm that he presented amounts in essence, to a general circulation model of the atmosphere, capable of describing both weather and climate.

In this lecture, we will review Richardson’s monumental study, and the triumphs and failures of his attempt to forecast the weather. His methods are at the core of atmospheric simulation and it may be reasonably claimed that his work is the basis of modern weather and climate forecasting. His dream has come true.

Interact online

• Follow the MPE CDT on Twitter
• You can interact with this event on Twitter using the hashtag #mathsonearth

Got a question? Email the MPE CDT >

Programme:

Coffee and Tea available from 10.30

11.00: Welcome from Jennifer Scott

11.00-11.45  Dr Samuel Hatfield, ECMWF (Chaired by Jennifer Scott)

‘Millibars and Megabytes’  
Over the past 40 years there has been a monumental increase in the accuracy of weather forecasts, fuelled by supercomputing technology. Nowadays, by simulating the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and other natural systems on these supercomputers, we are able to predict the tracks of hurricanes and other storms even 8 days ahead. Such high accuracy forecasts have demonstrable value to a global society more and more exposed to the extreme weather of a changing climate. In this talk I will discuss the key advances in supercomputing that allowed these developments in Earth-system simulation science, and what further advances we can expect as supercomputing technology continues to evolve into the future.  

…
 

12.00-12.45  Dr Christopher Maynard, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Reading and The Met Office (Chaired by Jochen Broecker)

‘The challenge of weather and climate prediction on the next generation of supercomputer’  

Improvements in the accuracy of weather forecasts and climate model predictions rely, at least in part, on improvements to computational speed of supercomputers. However, inter-generational processor speed increases ceased in the late nineties. Since then, gains in computational performance have come from exploiting parallelism in computation, i.e. doing multiple things at once. However, power constraints have forced processors to become ever more parallel. Moreover, even complex, heterogeneous architectures in supercomputer nodes such as CPU+GPU are now becoming common. How can we develop scientific software when the underlying computer architectures and programming models change more rapidly than model development? In this talk I will detail the approach the Met Office taking to developing new weather and climate models for future supercomputers. 

…

12.45-14.00 Lunch – room 111 The Palmer Building

…

14.00-14.45  Dr Joanne Waller, The Met Office (Chaired by Colin Cotter)

‘Can we handle spatial observation error correlations in atmospheric data assimilation?’  

Over the last 10 years the use of inter-channel correlations in data assimilation has resulted in improved weather forecasts. However, despite the existence of significant spatial error correlations they are not yet widely accounted for in atmospheric data assimilation. This presentation will consider how we can handle these spatial error correlations. First, the importance and expected benefits of including spatial error correlations will be discussed. Next, potential methodology for handling spatial correlations will be presented along with some of the technical challenges that still remain. Finally, we present results that show the impact of assimilating Doppler radar radial wind observations when explicitly accounting for the correlated observation errors. We conclude that, though some technical challenges remain, we are able to handle some spatial observation error correlations, and the benefits of this are beginning to emerge. 

…

15.00 Closing remarks, Dan Crisan

…..