Climate and Weather
On Saturday 17th March 2007, leading weather and climate scientists launched our guide to weather and climate predictions for the public at St John’s College, Oxford. The presenters gave a fascinated audience a whirlwind ride through the complex world of numerical models, including recent techniques for combining predictions and making probabilistic forecasts, and helped them to make sense of the IPCC assessments of the impact of CO2 on the climate.
Download a copy of the document: Making Sense of the Weather and Climate (pdf, 1.2MB).
NOTE: The speakers’ slides are subject to copyright restrictions.
PROGRAMME AND CONTRIBUTORS
What do we know about predicting the weather?
MR KEITH GROVES has been Head of Forecasting at the Met Office for the past three years. In over 30 years with the Met Office he has undertaken a variety of jobs, including atmospheric chemistry, operational forecasting, observations and several roles in support of the defence area of the Met Office.
Download Keith Groves’ slides (ppt, 3.7MB)
DR TIM PALMER FRS is head of division, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. He was lead author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and coordinator of two recent EU Climate Prediction Projects. Tim is co-chair of the World Climate Research Programme CLIVAR international scientific steering group and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Download Tim Palmer’s slides here (ppt, 4.1MB)
Some of these slides have moving images. To view them properly you will need to download the files below. Warning!—Some of these files are extremely large. Do not try to download on a slow connection. If you do have a fast connection they are worth it! (You must keep the file name the same and save them to the same folder as the ppt file.)
Download File 1 (avi, 52.4MB) A model of global precipitation
Download File 2 (avi, 58.3MB) A model of typhoon formation
Download File 3 (avi, 5.90MB) A model of cloud formation
Download File 4 (avi, 11.8MB) A graph demonstrating chaos theory
Download File 5 (avi, 10.9MB) Two weather forecasts using nearly identical initial conditions that lead to: (a) a dull October day; and (b) the 1987 storm
Download File 6 (avi, 11.0MB) Illustrating the chaotic nature of weather. Imagine each magnet is a type of weather (e.g., hot, cold, wet, dry).
Download File 7 (avi, 13.9MB) Climate change pushes a wedge under the magnet platform, so although the weather still varies there is a trend towards one type of weather pattern
Download File 8 (avi, 52.4MB) Another model of typhoon formation
Download File 9 (avi, 13.2MB) A model of global cloud patterns
Why do they get it wrong?
HURRICANES
DR JULIAN HEMING graduated from the Reading University Meteorology Department in 1988 and joined the Met Office, initially working on observation impact assessment. In the early 1990s he started examining the Met Office global model’s capabilities in tropical cyclone forecasting. This culminated in him developing a new tropical cyclone initialisation scheme that improved the Met Office global model’s forecast tracks by 30%. Since then he has worked as the Met Office’s tropical cyclone specialist dealing with a diverse range of matters from model development to forecast verification and advisory production to media briefings. He is the Met Office’s prime contact with all the regional tropical cyclone forecast centres around the world.
Download Julian Heming’s slides (ppt, 3.1MB)
FLASH FLOODS
PROFESSOR CHRIS COLLIER is a physicist and professor of environmental remote sensing at the University of Salford. After 27 years working in the Met Office in research, operational instrumentation and commercial services, Chris joined Salford in 1995 becoming Dean of the Faculty of Science, Engineering & Environment (1999-2003). He was President of the Royal Meteorological Society (2004-06) and has published over 80 refereed journal papers, two books on radar hydrometeorology and over 100 conference papers and reports. He has chaired and served on many national and international committees.
Download Professor Collier’s slides (ppt, 2.4MB)
SEVERE WINDS
DR PETER CLARK is head of the Met Office Mesoscale Modelling Group in the Joint Centre for Mesoscale Meteorology, Reading University. This group is responsible for developing future very high resolution forecast systems aimed at very short range forecasting of severe weather such as thunderstorms. He spent 13 years at the environmental research group of the Central Electricity Generating Board measuring and modelling the causes of acid rain and photochemical oxidants. From 1996 to 1998 he was head of Local Forecasting R&D at the Met Office.
This session was chaired by
PROFESSOR PAUL HARDAKER is a mathematician by background. He spent 14 years at the Met Office in a variety of roles, including heading the observations development branch, directing the science and technology development programmes and, latterly, as a policy advisor to Government on climate change and civil contingencies. Paul is now Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society. He also chairs the NERC programme on the Flood Risk from Extreme Events.
What does the future hold?
WEATHER FORECAST FOR MAY DAY 2080
PETER GIBBS was born in Sunderland, grew up in the English Lake District, studied Physics and Geography at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and then worked at the British Antarctic Survey based in Cambridge. Peter initially trained an worked in the Antarctic as a weather observer, but joined the Met Office in 1983 as a trainee forecaster. He spent several years in the forecast office at RAF Honington in Suffolk. In 1989, Peter moved to the Norwich Weather Centre and began television broadcasting as a forecaster with BBC Norwich’s Look East in 1993, and moved to the BBC Weather Centre to join the BBC World team in October 1997. He began forecasting for other BBC channels from November 1998 and has also appeared on BBC TV’s Breakfast News. He now broadcasts across all BBC channels.
Download Peter Gibbs’ slides here (ppt, 11.7MB)
Some of these slides have moving images. To view them properly you will need to download the files below. Warning!—Some of these files are extremely large. Do not try to download on a slow connection. If you do have a fast connection they are worth it! (You must keep the file name the same and save them to the same folder as the ppt file.)
Download File 1 (mpeg, 3.66MB) A model of predicted changes in temperature based on the high emission scenario
Dowload File 2 (avi, 46.7MB) A model illustrating the formation and progression of Hurricane Katrina
Dowload File 3 (avi, 2.93MB) A model showing changes in sea ice coverage
NEW CLIMATE PREDICTION SCENARIOS FOR THE UK
DR GEOFF JENKINS works at the Hadley Centre, the division of the Met Office that undertakes research into climate change. He worked on the first science report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990, and he now manages the new climate scenarios for the UK, which are due out in 2008.
Download Geoff Jenkins’ slides here (ppt, 3.7MB)
DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE
DR PETER STOTT is Manager of Understanding and Attributing Climate Change at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change at the UK Met Office. He leads the Hadley Centre research program in the area of detection and attribution of climate change. He is a contributor to the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. He is a Lead Author for the chapter on ‘Understanding and Attributing Climate Change’ in the Working Group I report. He is also a member of the Core Writing Team of the IPCC Synthesis Report, which synthesises the findings of the three Working Groups of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, and which was published in late 2007. He has published many papers on attribution of climate change on global and regional scales. His paper on ‘Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003’ published by Nature in 2004 was chosen by Nature in their end of year issue as one of their 10 highlight papers of the year.
Download Peter Stott’s slides here (ppt, 1MB)
The final session was chaired by
DR BILL BURROUGHS is a professional science writer. After seven years at the UK National Physical Laboratory researching atmospheric physics, Bill spent three years as a UK Scientific Attache in Washington DC. Between 1974 and 1995 he held a series of senior posts in the UK Departments of Energy and then Health. He has published 11 books on various aspects of weather and climate and written widely in newspapers and popular magazines.
The symposium and the briefing document, Making Sense of the Weather and Climate, were produced in association with
Last updated: December 01 2009
