- Resources
- T-O-Y 2010 Major Events
- Climate Processes
- Climate Models and Data
- Summer School July 12-23
- Past Events
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IMAGe Theme-of-the-Year Program (TOY)
The Theme-of-the-Year is a year-long
focus on some aspect of applied mathematics and the geosciences,
designed to advance research and education between the mathematical and
the geoscience communities. Typically TOY sponsors a series of
workshops or schools along with a visitor program, coordinates with
NCAR science groups and partners with other mathematics institutes.
The topics are selected by the IMAGe external advisory panel
and coordinated by one or more Visiting Co-director(s).

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TOY 2010: Mathematicians and
climate.
Co-directors:
Chris Jones
University of North Carolina
Hans G. Kaper Argonne
National Laboratory
Mary Lou
Zeeman Bowdoin College
Climate change research is about the future. The driving force is
our need to understand what will happen to our planet, be it in terms
of predicting climate changes or their societal impacts. For
essentially every question asked, a mathematical model is the vehicle
for extrapolating into the future. It is then essential that the
mathematics community be involved and more mathematicians are brought
into climate change research. This program will use NCAR scientists
and facilities as a hub to engage mathematical scientists in
substantial problems in climate research.
This Theme-of-the-Year is in partnership with the Mathematical
Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) with the primary activities being
two synthetic workshops and capped by a summer school.
This program leverages the deep and long
standing ties of MSRI to the mathematics community to involve
mathematicians with a broad range of interests and who have the
potential to bring a valuable perspcetive on climate modeling.
Along with the workshops and school will be a series of targeted visits by mathematical scientists to
collaborate on specific areas with climate scientists.
Major activities
- Mathematics of Interacting Climate Processes
Many processes are relevant to climate change. Moreover, they are, in many cases, not
well modeled or understood. Mathematical investigations can have an enormous impact
in increasing our understanding of these processes and their interactions. These include:
the carbon cycle on geological and biological time scales, sea-ice structure and
mechanics, ocean circulation, glacier melting, cloud formation, and extreme weather,
such as hurricanes, tornadoes and flooding.
- Data Assimilation and Climate Research (Late Spring 2010)
Although climate prediction does not incorporate data in
the same sequential manner as weather forecasting, the role of data is
critical in many respects. This includes initializing models with
the estimate of current conditions and comparing simulated climate to
long term collections of observations. An emerging area is the use of data assimliation to
scrutize the climate processes in a model using observations on
shorter time scales.
- Climate Change Summer School July 12-23
Approximately 40 graduate students from the mathematical and
geosciences will attend a program of lectures that provide both the
mathematical and geophysical context for studying climate. Students
will spend the second week participating on some specific projects
including dynamical systems, combining geopysical models and
observations and synthesizing large observational data sets.
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