Peter Lynch | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1947  |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation |
|
| Position held | professor emeritus |
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 with Ray Bates as a primary supervisor and Larry Crane as a secondary supervisor. [2] [3] He became an honorary part-time lecturer in the School of Mathematics in Trinity College Dublin in 1990, a position he still holds in 2024. [4] [5]
In 2004, he moved to academia, becoming Met Éireann Professor of Meteorology at the School of Mathematical Sciences, University College Dublin. He has supervised several doctoral theses there. [2] He is now an Emeritus Professor at the School of Mathematical Sciences. [6]
Shortly after formally retiring from UCD in 2011, he started writing a weekly mathematical blog called "That's Maths", about half of the articles also appearing in The Irish Times newspaper. [7] Three books of collected columns have resulted, in 2016, 2020, and 2022.
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". [8] 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, [9] 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." [10] In 2017 he received the Maths Week Ireland award for outstanding work in raising public awareness of mathematics. [11]
In 2012, Peter Lynch was elected to membership of the Royal Irish Academy. [12] He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
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 on fractals and a method for solving a system of linear equations known as modified Richardson iteration.
Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker was an English physicist and statistician of the 20th century. Walker studied mathematics and applied it to a variety of fields including aerodynamics, electromagnetism and the analysis of time-series data before taking up a teaching position at the University of Cambridge. Although he had no experience in meteorology, he was recruited for a post in the Indian Meteorological Department where he worked on statistical approaches to predict the monsoons. He developed the methods in the analysis of time-series data that are now called the Yule-Walker equations. He is known for his groundbreaking description of the Southern Oscillation, a major phenomenon of global climate, and for discovering what is named after him as the Walker circulation, and for greatly advancing the study of climate in general. He was also instrumental in aiding the early career of the Indian mathematical prodigy, Srinivasa Ramanujan.
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.
The Bulk Richardson Number (BRN) is an approximation of the Gradient Richardson number. The BRN is a dimensionless ratio in meteorology related to the consumption of turbulence divided by the shear production (the generation of turbulence kinetic energy caused by wind shear) of turbulence. It is used to show dynamic stability and the formation of turbulence.
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.
Ensemble forecasting is a method used in or within numerical weather prediction. Instead of making a single forecast of the most likely weather, a set of forecasts is produced. This set of forecasts aims to give an indication of the range of possible future states of the atmosphere.
Data assimilation refers to a large group of methods that update information from numerical computer models with information from observations. Data assimilation is used to update model states, model trajectories over time, model parameters, and combinations thereof. What distinguishes data assimilation from other estimation methods is that the computer model is a dynamical model, i.e. the model describes how model variables change over time, and its firm mathematical foundation in Bayesian Inference. As such, it generalizes inverse methods and has close connections with machine learning.
In applied mathematics, bred vectors are perturbations related to Lyapunov vectors, that capture fast-growing dynamical instabilities of the solution of a numerical model. They are used, for example, as initial perturbations for ensemble forecasting in numerical weather prediction. They were introduced by Zoltan Toth and Eugenia Kalnay.
A tropical cyclone forecast model is a computer program that uses meteorological data to forecast aspects of the future state of tropical cyclones. There are three types of models: statistical, dynamical, or combined statistical-dynamic. Dynamical models utilize powerful supercomputers with sophisticated mathematical modeling software and meteorological data to calculate future weather conditions. Statistical models forecast the evolution of a tropical cyclone in a simpler manner, by extrapolating from historical datasets, and thus can be run quickly on platforms such as personal computers. Statistical-dynamical models use aspects of both types of forecasting. Four primary types of forecasts exist for tropical cyclones: track, intensity, storm surge, and rainfall. Dynamical models were not developed until the 1970s and the 1980s, with earlier efforts focused on the storm surge problem.
James Louis Franklin is a former weather forecaster encompassing a 35-year career with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He served as the first branch chief of the newly formed Hurricane Specialist Unit (HSU) before his retirement in 2017.
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. Atmospheric models also differ in how they compute vertical fluid motions; some types of models are thermotropic, barotropic, hydrostatic, and non-hydrostatic. These model types are differentiated by their assumptions about the atmosphere, which must balance computational speed with the model's fidelity to the atmosphere it is simulating.
GME was an operational global numerical weather prediction model run by Deutscher Wetterdienst, the German national meteorological service. The model was run using an almost uniform icosahedral-hexagonal grid. The GME grid point approach avoided the disadvantages of spectral techniques as well as the pole problem in latitude–longitude grids and provides a data structure well suited to high efficiency on distributed memory parallel computers. The GME replaced two previous models, and was first run on 1 December 1999.
In weather forecasting, model output statistics (MOS) is a multiple linear regression technique in which predictands, often near-surface quantities, are related statistically to one or more predictors. The predictors are typically forecasts from a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model, climatic data, and, if applicable, recent surface observations. Thus, output from NWP models can be transformed by the MOS technique into sensible weather parameters that are familiar to a layperson.
Joseph G. Galway, was an American meteorologist pioneering in the fields of severe convective storm forecasting and research. He was one of the first forecasters for the Severe Local Storms Unit and the National Severe Storms Forecast Center, and developed widely used synoptic predictors associated with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, such as the jet streak and lifted index.
Dr. André Robert was a Canadian meteorologist who pioneered the modelling the Earth's atmospheric circulation.
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 travels all over the world helping other countries improve their weather stations.
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 and use 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.
The history of Atlantic tropical cyclone warnings details the progress of tropical cyclone warnings in the North Atlantic Ocean. The first service was set up in the 1870s from Cuba with the work of Father Benito Viñes. After his death, hurricane warning services were assumed by the US Army Signal Corps and United States Weather Bureau over the next few decades, first based in Jamaica and Cuba before shifting to Washington, D.C. The central office in Washington, which would evolve into the National Meteorological Center and the Weather Prediction Center, assumed the responsibilities by the early 20th century. This responsibility passed to regional hurricane offices in 1935, and the concept of the Atlantic hurricane season was established to keep a vigilant lookout for tropical cyclones during certain times of the year. Hurricane advisories issued every 12 hours by the regional hurricane offices began at this time.
The North American Ensemble Forecast System (NAEFS) is a joint project involving the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) in Canada, the National Weather Service (NWS) in the United States, and the National Meteorological Service of Mexico (NMSM) in Mexico providing numerical weather prediction ensemble guidance for the 1- to 16-day forecast period. The NAEFS combines the Canadian MSC and the US NWS global ensemble prediction systems, improving probabilistic operational guidance over what can be built from any individual country's ensemble. Model guidance from the NAEFS is incorporated into the forecasts of the respective national agencies.
Isidoro Orlanski is an Argentine-American atmospheric physicist, meteorologist, and ocean scientist. He is known for his contributions to the dynamics of weather systems and ocean currents, especially his work on mesoscale meteorology. He is currently an emeritus professor at Princeton University.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |