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 IMAGe
Theme-of-the-Year Program (T-O-Y)
The Theme-of-the-Year is a program to
focus on specific areas of research that will benefit from intense
collaborative effort. The topics will be selected by the IMAGe
external advisory panel and will be coordinated by a Visiting
Co-director.
Theme for 2007: Statistics for
Numerical Models
Numerical models are vital to simulate geophysical, chemical
and ecological processes and to understand the relationship among
components in the Earth system. As models have become larger and
more complex, their construction, validation and analysis are no
longer amenable to simple approaches and statistical summaries.
Statistical science in the past 20 years has advanced to handle
the interpretation of complicated multivariate, spatial and
temporal data sets and it is well suited to tackle the massive
outputs from numerical experiments that are now the norm in the
geosciences. This theme is undertaken with the goal of matching
cutting edge statistical methods to the needs of geophysical model
development and to make statisticial scientists aware of the
particular scientific issues and research in the geophysical
modeling community.
The T-O-Y is pursued in partnership with the Statistical and
Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI), located in
Research Triangle Park, NC and the Mathematical Sciences Research
Instititute (MSRI), Berkeley, CA. Both SAMSI and MSRI are NSF
Mathematics Institutes with an international stature in the
mathematics community. The main acitivites will be a series of
three workshops and a summer graduate workshop, all held at NCAR,
that dovetail with SAMSI activities on its programs on random
matrices and on computer models and with the MSRI summer school
program. IMAGe participation will be valuable in representing a
suite of geophysical models within the SAMSI program. Derek
Bingham, a faculty member at Simon Fraser University, British
Columbia, CA, and an expert in the design of computer model
experiments will serve as T-O-Y co-director and will visit NCAR
through the year with an extended stay in May. Montse Fuentes, a
faculty member at North Carolina State University and a SAMSI
Fellow, will be the main liason with the SAMSI programs.
The main planned workshops/meetings are:
- Geophysical
Models at NCAR: Scoping and Synthesis. 13-14 November 2006.
- Application
of Random Matrices Theory and Methods. 7-9 May 2007
- Application
of Statistics to Numerical Models: New Methods and Case Studies.
21-23 May 2007
- Summer Graduate Workshop on
Data Assimilation for the Carbon Cycle. 8-13 July 2007
The first workshop is intended as a scoping and brainstorming
meeting where four NCAR modeling groups will interact with a large
group of statisticians interested in the design and analysis of
computer experiments. The NCAR geophysical models/groups are
- Upper atmosphere model (TIEGCM) (HAO: Maura Hagan, Ray
Roble, Art Richmond)
- Single column boundary layer model (RAL/MMM: Josh Hacker)
- Two dimensional turbulence in Navier Stokes flows (IMAGe:
Annick Pouquet)
- Land component of the NCAR climate model (CGD: Gordon
Bonan; U Kansas: Johannes Feddema)
The intent is that concrete problems will be identified that
will help structure the statistical working group activity at
SAMSI. For each modeling group a statistical researcher will serve
as a liason to guide collaboration among the modeling group and
the statistical working groups.
Workshops II and III will be more traditional conferences but
will include a blend of tutorial and research talks. In each
workshop, ample time will be reserved for discussion and also for
presentations on progress on the specific modeling project
initiated in the first workshop.
The summer graduate workshop will be in partnership with MSRI
and focuses on the mathematical tools such as inverse methods and
data assimilation to estimate the surface sources of carbon
dioxide. The determination of sources of carbon in the Earths'
atmosphere is an important area of biogeochemistry and crucial in
quantifying human emissions of greenhouse gases. The summer
graduate workshop will build off of the successful model that was
held July 2006 at MSRI and will feature morning tutorial lectures
with reinforcing afternoon computational exercises and projects.
The Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART) will be used as a
software framework for the mathematical and statistical methods.
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