World weather expert to lecture at Memorial
A public lecture on Newfoundland and Labrador’s favourite subject – the weather – will take place at Memorial University.
Dr. Gilbert Brunet, head of Weather Science at the Met Office, will deliver a lecture titled The Mathematical Challenges of Earth-System and Weather Prediction on March 19.
During the lecture, Dr. Brunet will explore the significant applied challenges which remain to be met before acceptable meteorological and Earth-system forecasts can be produced worldwide from urban to planetary scale and all relevant time scales. The talk will present an historical perspective and outline some of the future challenges of this multi-scale and seamless prediction problem.
“Internationally, the increasing demand for accurate high-impact weather and Earth-system predictions is indisputable,” said Dr. Brunet. “It has led to significant investment in sophisticated applied mathematical algorithms and studies, high performance computing, high-speed telecommunication, remote sensing, and ground-, space- and aircraft-based measurement technologies.
“These have propped up field and laboratory process studies, the development of observational techniques and coupled numerical weather and Earth-system models to produce weather and climate predictions.”
Dr. Brunet, whose background includes a two-year period working in solid state physics at the University of Ottawa, obtained his PhD in meteorology at McGill University in 1989. He is currently head of Weather Science at the Met Office on a two-year secondment from Environment Canada where he was head of the Meteorological Research Division.
He is also Chair of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Weather Research Programme, World Meteorological Organization and has been recognized as an expert in dynamical meteorology. His work covers analytical and empirical studies of wave processes from regional to planetary scale, and numerical weather prediction from minutes to seasons.
The Atlantic Association for Research in the Mathematical Society and by the Canadian Mathematical Society are sponsoring the lecture as part of the special year on the Mathematics of Planet Earth. It will take place Tuesday, March 19 at 7:30 p.m. in the Bruneau Centre for Research and Innovation, Room IIC-2001 on the St. John’s Campus.