Summary
Weather and climate models have become increasingly important tools for making society more resilient to extremes of weather and for helping society plan for possible changes in future climate. These models are based on known laws of physics, but, because of computing constraints, are solved over a considerably reduced range of scales than are described in the mathematical expression of these laws. This generically leads to systematic errors when models are compared with observations. A new paradigm is proposed for solving these equations which sacrifices precision and determinism for small-scale motions. It is suggested that this sacrifice may allow the truncation scale of weather and climate models to extend down to cloud scales in the coming years, leading to more accurate predictions of future weather and climate.
Biography
Tim Palmer has been a Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Physics at Oxford University since 2010. After his PhD at Oxford in general relativity theory, Tim worked at the Meteorological Office, the University of Washington and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, where he led a team which developed the medium-range and seasonal ensemble prediction systems. Tim’s research spans a range of work, both theoretical and practical, in the field of dynamics and predictability of weather and climate.