Mathematical and statistical approaches to climate modelling and prediction

Programme theme

Our best estimates of future climate are based on the use of complex computer models that do not explicitly resolve the wide variety of spatio-temporal scales making up Earth's climate system. The non-linearity of the governing physical processes allows energy transfer between different scales, and many aspects of this complex behaviour can be represented by stochastic models. However, the theoretical basis for so doing is far from complete. Many uncertainties remain in predictions derived from climate models, yet governments are increasingly reliant on model predictions to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies. An overarching aim of climate scientists is to reduce the uncertainty in climate predictions and produce credible assessments of model accuracy. This programme focuses on two key themes that both require the close collaboration of mathematicians, statisticians and climate scientists in order to improve climate models and the interpretation of their output.

The first theme is the development of improved stochastic sub-grid-scale physics models, which have the potential to improve the variability of ensemble climate simulations. Progress can be made by establishing frameworks for relating models of different resolutions and for combining stochastic Earth System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs) with global climate models (GCMs). Stochastic approaches to climate modelling will benefit from improving the connection between deterministic models and statistical tools such as downscaling, emulation, reified modelling and dimensional reduction.

The second aspect of the programme concerns the use of statistical techniques to create a theoretically sound basis for probabilistic climate prediction. The vast amount of data produced by climate models needs synthesis in order to provide the predictions, and credible error estimates, required by policy makers. This theme will provide an environment in which to seek quantitative answers to fundamental questions of interpreting probabilistic output, and the reliability of climate predictions at varying space and time scales. It will also consider what measurements can be used to assess the quality of climate model predictions.

This programme will bring together world-leading researchers in climate modelling, mathematics and statistics in order to make progress in solving some of the major issues facing climate prediction.

Click here to download the programme's final scientific report

Preprints

Title	Year	Programme
A statistical mechanical approach for the computation of the climatic response to general forcings Authors: S Sarno, V Lucarini Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016
Synchronisation on astronomical forcing Authors: B De Saedeleer, Guillaume Lenoir, D Garcia-alvarez, Michel Crucifix Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016
Will climate change mathematics (?) Authors: Chris Jones Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016
Information theory and dynamical system predictability Authors: Richard Kleeman Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016
Thermodynamical properties of planetary fluid envelopes Authors: K Fraedrich, Francesco Ragone, V Lucarini Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016
An extreme non-linear example of the use of emulators with simulators using the Stommel model Authors: P Challenor, Y Andrianakis, Robin Tokmakian Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016
Predictability error growth of turbulent flows Authors: CE Leith, Ye Zhou Download PDF	2010	CLP	21 October 2016

Workshops

CLPW01

Seminars

Friday 13th August 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Huei-Ping Huang Arizona State University Coherent structures in high-resolution ocean model simulations and implications for climate prediction	Room 1

Wednesday 18th August 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Hugo Lambert University of Exeter Land-ocean surface temperature contrast and radiative forcing	Room 1

Thursday 19th August 2010
14:00 to 15:00	John Haslett Trinity College Dublin Studying uncertainty in palaeo-climate reconstructions: What can we infer from pollen about climate dynamics in the younger dryas?	Room 1

Friday 20th August 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Julia Hargreaves Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) Understanding and interpreting climate model ensembles	Room 1

Thursday 2nd September 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Towards a theory of the North Atlantic oscillation	Room 1
14:00 to 15:00	Vincent Garreta Trinity College Dublin Recovering past dynamics from a computer model: inversion of a vegetation model for paleoclimate reconstruction	Room 1

Friday 3rd September 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Lev Tarasov Memorial University of Newfoundland Inferring past ice: Bayesian calibration of a 3D glacial system model for the last deglaciation: methodology, challenges, and lessons	Room 1
14:00 to 15:00	Neil Edwards The Open University Not-implausible statistical climate modelling	Room 1

Monday 6th September 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Towards a mathematical theory of climate sensitivity.	Room 2

Tuesday 7th September 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Jonathan Rougier University of Bristol A helpful way to think about multi-model ensembles and the actual climate	Room 2

Wednesday 8th September 2010
11:00 to 12:00	A statistical mechanical apporach for the computation of the climatic response to general forcing	Room 2

Thursday 9th September 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Richard Wilkinson University of Nottingham ABC and other challenges in computational statistics	Room 2

Wednesday 15th September 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Jim Hall Newcastle University Emulation and calibration of a flood inundation model for climate risk analysis	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Caitlin Buck University of Sheffield Informal discussions	Room 2
14:00 to 15:00	Physics of the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation	Room 2

Thursday 16th September 2010
11:00 to 12:00	Joe Tribbia National Center for Atmospheric Research How to break quasi-geostrophic turbulence	Room 2
14:00 to 15:00	Stephen Belcher University of Reading How we build a parameterisation scheme: illustrated by Langmuir turbulence in the ocean mixed layer	Room 2

Friday 17th September 2010
11:00 to 12:00	Development of wavelet methodology for weather Data Assimilation	Room 2

Thursday 30th September 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Richard Katz University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Sir Gilbert Walker and a connection between El Nino and statistics	Room 1

Wednesday 6th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Robin Tokmakian Naval Postgraduate School Understanding uncertainty in climate model components	Room 1

Thursday 7th October 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Bayesian calibration of the Thermosphere-Ionosphere Electrodynamics General Circulation Model (TIE-GCM)	Room 1

Monday 11th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	How to design a climate ensemble	Room 1

Tuesday 12th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Georg Gottwald University of Sydney A variance constraining Kalman filter for data assimilation	Room 1

Wednesday 13th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Using simple models and rigorous mathematics to improve operational atmosphere and ocean modelling	Room 1

Thursday 14th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Georg Gottwald University of Sydney Stochastic model reduction on manifolds	Room 1
14:00 to 15:00	Ye Zhou Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory A perspective on turbulent flows: cascade dynamics in rotating flows	Room 1

Friday 15th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Predictability of the 2nd kind: numerical discretisations and their climatic response	Room 1

Monday 18th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Sebastian Reich Universität Potsdam Predicting the unpredictable: combining models and data	Room 1
12:00 to 13:00	Peter Leonard Read University of Oxford Regimes of global atmospheric circulation	Room 1

Tuesday 19th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Bill Dewar Florida State University Inviscid dissipation of balanced flow by topography	Room 1
11:15 to 12:15	Likely temporal abrupt shifts in the carbon cycle	Room 1

Wednesday 20th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Cécile Penland National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration Stochastic diagnosis of climate dynamics, with application to tropical SSTs	Room 1
12:00 to 13:00	Frank Kwasniok University of Exeter Predicting extremes in the midlatitudinal atmospheric circulation using regime-dependent statistical modelling	Room 1
14:00 to 15:00	Seoleun Shin Universität Potsdam Applications of Hamiltonian particle-mesh methods for atmospheric modelling	Room 1

Thursday 21st October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Julian Hunt University College London Changes in weather and climate systems, predictable and unpredictable	Room 1
12:00 to 13:00	Peter Ashwin University of Exeter Rate-dependent tipping points - a comparative approach	Room 1

Monday 25th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Michael Davey University College London Aspects of long-range forecasting and ENSO	Room 1

Tuesday 26th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Multi-model ensembles	Room 2
11:00 to 15:00	ASK discussion	Room 2

Wednesday 27th October 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Mike Thompson University of Cambridge Estimates of the ocean heat budget in the Gulf stream	Room 1

Tuesday 9th November 2010
10:00 to 11:00	John Thuburn University of Exeter Energy and enstrophy cascades in numerical models	Room 1

Friday 12th November 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Methods of time series analysis for climate tipping points	Room 1

Tuesday 16th November 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Bryson Bates CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR) Climate change Down Under: challenges, opportunities and uncertainty	Room 1

Wednesday 17th November 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Arthur Dempster Harvard University New thinking about statistical information and its applications to climate prediction	Admin Office [UNAVAILABLE]

Friday 19th November 2010
11:00 to 16:00	John Huthnance	Discussion Room

Monday 22nd November 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Robert Niven University of New South Wales Derivation of a local form of the Maximum Entropy Production principle	Room 2

Tuesday 23rd November 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Andrew Parnell University College Dublin Fast Bayesian palaeoclimate reconstruction	Room 1

Wednesday 24th November 2010
14:05 to 14:30	Estimating and reducing uncertainty in climate prediction: key findings from the Newton Institute Programme	Admin Office [UNAVAILABLE]
14:30 to 16:00	Panel discussion - The scientific uncertainties and their implications	Admin Office [UNAVAILABLE]
16:30 to 18:00	Panel discussion - Policy in the face of uncertainty	Admin Office [UNAVAILABLE]

Thursday 25th November 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Entropy production and efficiencyin the climate system	Room 1

Friday 26th November 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Robert Niven University of New South Wales Application of the Maximum Entropy Production principle to turbulent fluid mechanics and planetary systems	Room 1

Thursday 2nd December 2010
14:00 to 15:00	A system-biology investigation of heat shock protein regulated gene networks: mathematical models, predictions and laboratory experiments	Room 1

Tuesday 14th December 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Vincent Garreta Trinity College Dublin Inference for models with implicit likelihood: a statistical review of data-assimilation and model calibration	Room 2

Wednesday 15th December 2010
14:00 to 15:00	Mainul Haque University of Kalyani A system-biology investigation of heat shock protein regulated gene networks: mathematical models, predictions and laboratory experiments	Room 2

Tuesday 21st December 2010
10:00 to 11:00	Tilmann Gneiting Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Statistical processing for ensembles of numerical weather prediction model	Room 1

Mathematical and statistical approaches to climate modelling and prediction

Organisers

Richard Chandler University College London
Matt Collins University of Exeter
Peter Cox University of Exeter
Kevin Horsburgh National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool
John Huthnance National Oceanography Centre, Liverpool
Jonathan Rougier University of Bristol
David Stephenson University of Exeter
John Thuburn University of Exeter

Speakers

Peter Ashwin University of Exeter
Bryson Bates CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR)
Stephen Belcher University of Reading
Caitlin Buck University of Sheffield
Michael Davey University College London
Arthur Dempster Harvard University
Bill Dewar Florida State University
Neil Edwards The Open University
Vincent Garreta Trinity College Dublin
Tilmann Gneiting Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Georg Gottwald University of Sydney
Jim Hall Newcastle University
Mainul Haque University of Kalyani
Julia Hargreaves Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)
John Haslett Trinity College Dublin
Huei-Ping Huang Arizona State University
Julian Hunt University College London
Richard Katz University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
Frank Kwasniok University of Exeter
Hugo Lambert University of Exeter
Robert Niven University of New South Wales
Andrew Parnell University College Dublin
Cécile Penland National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration
Peter Leonard Read University of Oxford
Sebastian Reich Universität Potsdam
Jonathan Rougier University of Bristol
Seoleun Shin Universität Potsdam
Lev Tarasov Memorial University of Newfoundland
Mike Thompson University of Cambridge
John Thuburn University of Exeter
Robin Tokmakian Naval Postgraduate School
Joe Tribbia National Center for Atmospheric Research
Richard Wilkinson University of Nottingham
Ye Zhou Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Show All

Mathematical and statistical approaches to climate modelling and prediction

Programme theme

Preprints

A statistical mechanical approach for the computation of the climatic response to general forcings

Synchronisation on astronomical forcing

Will climate change mathematics (?)

Information theory and dynamical system predictability

Thermodynamical properties of planetary fluid envelopes

An extreme non-linear example of the use of emulators with simulators using the Stommel model

Predictability error growth of turbulent flows

Workshops

Stochastic methods in climate modelling

Probabilistic climate prediction

Climate change question time

Uncertainty in climate prediction: models, methods and decision support

Seminars

Organisers

Speakers

Supported By

Mathematical and statistical approaches to climate modelling and prediction

Programme theme

Preprints

A statistical mechanical approach for the computation of the climatic response to general forcings

Synchronisation on astronomical forcing

Will climate change mathematics (?)

Information theory and dynamical system predictability

Thermodynamical properties of planetary fluid envelopes

An extreme non-linear example of the use of emulators with simulators using the Stommel model

Predictability error growth of turbulent flows

Workshops

Stochastic methods in climate modelling

Probabilistic climate prediction

Climate change question time

Uncertainty in climate prediction: models, methods and decision support

Seminars

Organisers

Speakers

Supported By

Register for updates