Special Interest Group on Numerical Weather Prediction

Although all of us are interested in the daily or annual changes in the weather, their forecasting or even modelling is a challenging task which needs the use of various mathematical ideas. The weather we are experiencing is the combined effect of the atmospehere’s dynamics on several scales and other physical and chemical phenomena like formation of clouds and precipitation, etc. The first one can be mathematically described by a complicated coupled system of nonlinear partial differential equations based mainly on the Navier–Stokes equations, while the latter is taken into account with the help of statistical considerations and certain parametrisations.

Our group is mainly interested in investigating already existing and introducing new methods to solve the mathematical problem describing the atmosphere’s dynamics. Our aim is to provide a platform for interchanging ideas between meteorologists, facing day by day the challenge of improving their weather forecast model, and mathematicians developing efficient new methods in the relevant fields.

Here is a short summary of our Special Interest Group’s research fields:

• Study of nonlinear evolution equations, such as the system of partial differential equations describing the atmosphere’s and ocean’s large-scale dynamics, in an abstract framework.
• Development, investigation, and application of efficient numerical methods for solving nonlinear evolution equations, e.g. operator splitting procedures, exponential and Magnus integrators.
• Analysis of transport models describing the spread of pollutants in air and water.
• Investigation and application of various promising data assimilation methods.
• Study of all kind of applications related to the fields above.

Between 26-27 May 2014 we organised a workshop which covered most of the topics mentioned above (for more information please click here).

If you are interested in the group’s work, please read a more detailed summary in ECMI Newsletter 56.