Physics Colloquium: The Physics behind Weather Forecasting
Main content
Weather and climate science is among the most demanding in terms of challenges for computation and data. Terabytes of data are produced every day for operational forecasting, but at the end most people are only interested in a few symbols on their favourite weather app worth a few kilobytes. I will touch on the physical and mathematical principles of weather forecasting and the challenges and computational demands. I will also focus on current research questions with respect to storm development and touch upon theoretical aspects of ongoing research.
About the Speaker
Thomas Spengler has been a professor at UiB's Geophysical Institute since 2014. Since 2015 he has also been director of the Norwegian Research School on Changing Climates in the Coupled Earth System (CHESS). In 2012 he was elected as a member of the International Commission for Dynamic Meteorology.
Thomas Spengler obtained his doctorate at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in 2008. He is a meteorologist focusing on the combination of theory, observations, and modelling, specialized on a variety of scales from mesoscale to large-scale flow. He participated in several field campaigns addressing atmospheric flow and atmosphere-ocean interactions. His research interests are currently focused on high impact weather in the Arctic and on atmosphere-ocean-ice interactions. In 2015 he was elected as chair of the Atmospheric Working Group of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC).
