The fluid dynamics of weather and climate forecasting - Stephen Belcher
LIFD 5th Celebration Event | Stephen Belcher | 25th January 2024
Weather and climate forecasting are demanding computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problems - complex, high-resolution, coupled models that are being tested through repeatedly assimilating new observations to produce forecasts within a narrow operational window, every day of the year. Similarly, climate predictions, for example UKCP18 (the UK Climate Predictions 2018), require vast computers to run the weather models into future climate scenarios to provide advice to citizens, private sector and Governments.
In this talk I will describe the process of making a weather and climate forecast, and how consistent investment in CFD has led to a consistent improvement in predictive capability. We shall also explore some of the remaining challenges, such as the representation of the moist convection that yields powerful tropical thunderstorms, and then scales up to affecting our weather in the mid latitudes, or the 2d turbulence in the ocean that is so important for the overall ocean circulation, and then the carbon cycle, so important for climate. Finally, I shall introduce some very recent results from AI deep learning emulators of weather models, which point to a major disruption in how operational centres produce weather forecasts, and may well disrupt the whole fluid dynamics endeavour!
For more information on LIFD, please visit our website: https://fluids.leeds.ac.uk/
Sign up to the LIFD mailing list: https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/lif...