Invisible in the Storm: the role of mathematics in understanding weather

Abstract

Although humans have tried to forecast weather for millennia, mathematical principles were used in meteorology only after the turn of the twentieth century. From the first proposal for using mathematics to predict weather, to the supercomputers that now process meteorological information gathered from satellites and weather stations, this lecture will describe the groundbreaking evolution of modern weather forecasting and climate prediction. We shall discuss the challenges of making predictions about a chaotic system, showing what improvements we might yet hope for and what factors still confound us.