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October – Samuel Hatfield ‘The quiet revolution of numerical weather prediction’
20th October 2020 @ 10:58 pm
Tuesday 20th October – Samuel Hatfield
The quiet revolution of numerical weather prediction
Over the past 40 years there has been a monumental rise in the skill of weather forecasts. This has been achieved through a concerted international scientific effort and sustained investments in new technologies, including weather-observing satellites and number-crunching supercomputers. As a result of these developments, we have been able to extend the horizon of skilful forecasts by one day every decade. Now, we are able to predict the effects of hurricanes and other storms, such as Hurricane Sandy, even 8 days before they make landfall, and this has demonstrable value to a global society more and more exposed to extreme weather events in a changing climate. In this talk I will discuss the key developments in meteorological science that has allowed this so-called “quiet revolution” of numerical weather prediction. I will introduce the key characters of this 150-year old story, including an algorithmically-minded Quaker and a Hungarian polymath, and discuss the implications that chaos theory has on the ultimate limit of forecasting.
Sam Hatfield is a scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading. His day-to-day research focuses on how we can better exploit supercomputers to simulate the global climate system, including the atmosphere and the ocean, thereby improving forecasts of extreme weather events. He holds a DPhil in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Oxford.