Our group

Group leader:

Antje Weisheimer

Formerly: Tim Palmer (emeritus)

This page is currently undergoing an update ..

Predictions of weather and climate are inherently uncertain: initial conditions can never be known perfectly, and our weather and climate simulators are necessarily imperfect representations of the underlying laws of physics. Given this, how can we quantify reliably the uncertainty in weather and climate predictions, from one day ahead to one century ahead, and what is needed to reduce current levels of uncertainty?

Answering these problems will be crucial for society worldwide and will involve research across many disciplines, including the physics of weather and climate, nonlinear dynamical systems theory, and the theory of stochastic processes.

Ensemble forecasts in the Lorenz attractor.

Fig: Ensemble forecasts in the Lorenz attractor

Lorenz demonstrated, with skill,

The chaos of heatwave and chill:

Tornadoes in Texas

Are formed by the flexes

Of butterflies’ wings in Brazil

(Peter Lynch, University College Dublin)