Peter Lynch is an Irish meteorologist, mathematician, blogger and book author. His interests include numerical weather prediction, dynamic meteorology, Hamiltonian mechanics, the history of meteorology, and the popularisation of mathematics. [1]
Peter Lynch is an Irish meteorologist, mathematician, blogger and book author. His interests include numerical weather prediction, dynamic meteorology, Hamiltonian mechanics, the history of meteorology, and the popularisation of mathematics. [1]
Lynch was born in Dublin, and educated at University College Dublin, where he obtained his BSc (1968) and MSc (1969) in mathematical science. He enlisted in the Irish meteorological service (now known as Met Éireann) in 1971, and worked there until 2004, rising to the rank of Head of the Research and Training Division and later Deputy Director. In 1982, he was awarded a PhD by Trinity College Dublin for his thesis Planetary-scale Hydrodynamic Instability in the Atmosphere written under the supervision of Ray Bates. [2]
In 2004, he moved to academia, becoming Met Éireann Professor of Meteorology at the School of Mathematical Sciences. He has supervised several doctoral theses there. [2] He is now an Emeritus Professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences. [3]
Shortly after formally retiring from UCD in 2011, he started writing a weekly mathematical blog called "That's Maths", about half of the columns also appearing in The Irish Times newspaper (on the first and third Thursdays of each month). [4] Two books of collected columns have resulted, in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
One of Lynch's principal interests is the scientific approach to weather forecasting and its history, [1] for example publishing a 2000 paper called "Weather Forecasting: from woolly art to solid science". [5] Lewis Fry Richardson pioneered mathematical techniques of weather forecasting and dreamed that weather prediction would one day be an exact science. Modern computers were not available in Richardson's day and further theoretical advances were needed before Richardson's dream could be a realised. Lynch examined this issue first in a 2008 paper, [6] and later in his book The Emergence of Numerical Weather Prediction: Richardson's Dream.
In 2014 Lynch received the European Meteorological Society Silver Medal for "his outstanding contribution to meteorological education and outreach activities, his important scientific contribution to Numerical Weather forecasting and his leadership in international collaborations." [7] In 2017 he received the Maths Week Ireland award for outstanding work in raising public awareness of mathematics. [8]
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not begin until the 18th century. The 19th century saw modest progress in the field after weather observation networks were formed across broad regions. Prior attempts at prediction of weather depended on historical data. It was not until after the elucidation of the laws of physics, and more particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, the development of the computer that significant breakthroughs in weather forecasting were achieved. An important branch of weather forecasting is marine weather forecasting as it relates to maritime and coastal safety, in which weather effects also include atmospheric interactions with large bodies of water.
Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th century.
Lewis Fry Richardson, FRS was an English mathematician, physicist, meteorologist, psychologist, and pacifist who pioneered modern mathematical techniques of weather forecasting, and the application of similar techniques to studying the causes of wars and how to prevent them. He is also noted for his pioneering work concerning fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration.
Vilhelm Friman Koren Bjerknes was a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who did much to found the modern practice of weather forecasting. He formulated the primitive equations that are still in use in numerical weather prediction and climate modeling, and he developed the so-called Bergen School of Meteorology, which was successful in advancing weather prediction and meteorology in the early 20th century.
Jule Gregory Charney was an American meteorologist who played an important role in developing numerical weather prediction and increasing understanding of the general circulation of the atmosphere by devising a series of increasingly sophisticated mathematical models of the atmosphere. His work was the driving force behind many national and international weather initiatives and programs.
HIRLAM, the High Resolution Limited Area Model, is a Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) forecast system developed by the international HIRLAM programme.
Numerical weather prediction (NWP) uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in the 1950s that numerical weather predictions produced realistic results. A number of global and regional forecast models are run in different countries worldwide, using current weather observations relayed from radiosondes, weather satellites and other observing systems as inputs.
Edward Norton Lorenz was an American mathematician and meteorologist who established the theoretical basis of weather and climate predictability, as well as the basis for computer-aided atmospheric physics and meteorology. He is best known as the founder of modern chaos theory, a branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.
Data assimilation is a mathematical discipline that seeks to optimally combine theory with observations. There may be a number of different goals sought – for example, to determine the optimal state estimate of a system, to determine initial conditions for a numerical forecast model, to interpolate sparse observation data using knowledge of the system being observed, to set numerical parameters based on training a model from observed data. Depending on the goal, different solution methods may be used. Data assimilation is distinguished from other forms of machine learning, image analysis, and statistical methods in that it utilizes a dynamical model of the system being analyzed.
Joseph Smagorinsky was an American meteorologist and the first director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL).
In atmospheric science, an atmospheric model is a mathematical model constructed around the full set of primitive, dynamical equations which govern atmospheric motions. It can supplement these equations with parameterizations for turbulent diffusion, radiation, moist processes, heat exchange, soil, vegetation, surface water, the kinematic effects of terrain, and convection. Most atmospheric models are numerical, i.e. they discretize equations of motion. They can predict microscale phenomena such as tornadoes and boundary layer eddies, sub-microscale turbulent flow over buildings, as well as synoptic and global flows. The horizontal domain of a model is either global, covering the entire Earth, or regional (limited-area), covering only part of the Earth. The different types of models run are thermotropic, barotropic, hydrostatic, and nonhydrostatic. Some of the model types make assumptions about the atmosphere which lengthens the time steps used and increases computational speed.
Frederick Gale Shuman was an American pioneer in the development of operational numerical weather prediction. Shuman participated in the major events that brought computer forecasting from academic concepts to the foundation of weather prediction. He began his work in the early 1950s to discover numerical methods that give today's meteorologists the ability to issue extended weather forecasts and to predict severe weather conditions several days in advance.
Brendan McWilliams was an Irish meteorologist and science writer. He was born in Dublin in 1944 but grew up in Waterville, County Kerry where his father was in charge of the Valentia Observatory. He graduated in mathematical science from University College Cork (UCC) in 1964. He joined the Irish Meteorological Service in 1965 and worked as a weather forecaster, first at Shannon Airport and later at the Central Analysis and Forecast Office in Dublin. During the 1970s he was a regular presenter of the daily weather forecast on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) television.
Jagadish Shukla is an Indian meteorologist and Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University in the United States.
Eugenia Enriqueta Kalnay is an Argentine meteorologist and a Distinguished University Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, which is part of the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park in the United States.
Michael Gallagher is an Irish postman from County Donegal, known for accurately predicting weather-related events in Ireland. He studies the behaviour of animals and plants to determine the nature of the weather. His predictions have been disputed by Met Éireann and their scientific methods yet he says between 70 and 80 per cent of his predictions come true.
Gerald Fleming is an Irish former meteorologist and weather presenter. He joined Met Éireann in 1980 and worked as co-ordinator of the RTÉ Television weather team. He served as Head of Forecasting in Met Éireann until his retirement in December 2017. He is now involved with the World Bank and goes to all over the world despite him being “retired”.
The history of numerical weather prediction considers how current weather conditions as input into mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather and future sea state has changed over the years. Though first attempted manually in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of the computer and computer simulation that computation time was reduced to less than the forecast period itself. ENIAC was used to create the first forecasts via computer in 1950, and over the years more powerful computers have been used to increase the size of initial datasets as well as include more complicated versions of the equations of motion. The development of global forecasting models led to the first climate models. The development of limited area (regional) models facilitated advances in forecasting the tracks of tropical cyclone as well as air quality in the 1970s and 1980s.
Evelyn Cusack is an Irish former meteorologist who served as the Head of Forecasting from 2018 at Met Éireann, where she worked from 1981 until her retirement in 2023. She is the longest-serving weather presenter on RTÉ.
Norman A. Phillips was an American meteorologist notable for his contributions to geophysical fluid dynamics. In 1956, he developed a mathematical model that could realistically depict monthly and seasonal patterns in the troposphere, which became the first successful general circulation model of climate.
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