Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2020
Volume 65, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 2–6, 2020; Denver, Colorado
Session R37: Predictability of the Climate System
8:00 AM–11:00 AM,
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Room: 605
Sponsoring
Unit:
GPC
Chair: William Collins, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Abstract: R37.00005 : Bayesian Inference for Climate prediction
Presenter:
Peter Jan van Leeuwen
(Colorado State University)
Author:
Peter Jan van Leeuwen
(Colorado State University)
An important characteristic of the climate system is that the different Earth system components (e.g. atmosphere, ocean ,land surface and icecaps) have vastly different internal time scales. The main work horse for weather prediction, a (variational) smoother in which observations over a time window of 6-12 hours are used to find the best starting point for predictions, is problematic because the optimal time window length is substantially different for the different components. Even after 20 years of intensive research no satisfying smoother solution has been found.
This suggests to use a filter solution without an assimilation window, but the main workhorse there, the Ensemble Kalman Filter, suffers from too small ensemble sizes to accommodate the large number of observations (even when so-called localization is applied).
Another issue is that with its many feedbacks the climate system is highly nonlinear, while the standard methods for weather predictions are only optimal for linear, and perhaps weakly nonlinear systems. Furthermore, system updates are typically too abrupt and need to be added incrementally during the prediction.
We will discuss potential solutions based on existing techniques, and alternative ideas based on so-called particle flows.The latter are fully nonlinear while combining the strong points of smoothers and filters mentioned above, and have the potential to make substantial strides forwards towards better climate prediction.
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2025 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700