Weather Predictions and Climate

Team and Interlocutors

S. Barros, D. Marchesin, A. Nachbin, C. Nobre, P. L. da Silva Dias

G. Papanicolaou (Stanford)

 

Research Topics

Efficient and accurate numerical weather and climate predictions are of invaluable importance to a country as Brazil, from both the scientific-technological as well as the social-economical points of view. The scientific-technological impact ranges from the mathematical and computational technology acquired, all the way to applications such as in the aerospace industry and research.

The development of Mathematics in meteorological applications has concrete benefits for our country. There is a large demand for specilized software geared towards brazilian climate characteristics. Another benefit of vital importance is the specilized human resources to be generated. Brazil has a big demand for such a personnel.

D. Marchesin and A. Nachbin have been collaborating, for over two years, on upgrading and optimizing the operational code of the Brazilian Center for Weather Prediction and Climate Studies (CPTEC/INPE; directed by C. Nobre) of the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE). This effort has been pursued under the collaboration with researchers of the Intitute of Astronomy and Geophysics (IME/USP; through P. L. da Silva Diaz) and the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IAG/USP; through S. Barros), both at the University of São Paulo. The goal of this project is to make the operational code more efficient, enabling finner grids and consequently producing more accurate predictions.

Brazil has a great demand for /Research & Development/ in themes related to Atmospheric and Oceanic Flows. Among several /Mathematical Modeling and Computing/ themes, we can mention a few. The accuracy of the prognostic variables depend, among others, on the resolution of the discrete computational model. The increase of resolution, considered the computational time restrictions, require a combination of very efficient numerical methods, high performance supercomputing as well as sophisticated programming techniques. A very good knowledge of the mathematical models involved is of fundamental importance. In the main international centers for weather prediciton the recent tendency is to implement more sophisticated mathematical models with a wider range of applicability. In other words, in the near future there will not exist regional and global meteorological models. A single model will cope with different physical regimes. Applied and Computational Mathematics has an important role in this effort.