Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Florida

I suppose I should show off by blogging live from this Workshop on Predictability, observations and uncertainty in geosciences using my Zaurus via wifi. I haven't had much time over the last couple of days as it's been back-to-back interesting talks without any boring sessions.

It's been great to get back re-acquainted with the bleeding edge of numerical weather prediction (NWP). This is really where it's at in prediction science IMO - these guys have to make forecasts twice a day and mistakes stick out embarassingly. There is no making up stuff and hiding behind the plausible deniability of "our model suggests..." Climate scientists who think there is nothing to learn from this field are really missing out.

The more eminent speakers include (in speaking order) Lorenz, Le Dimet, Kalnay, Krishnamurti, Toth, Anderson. Some perhaps are merely brilliant scientists, several are legends. Exalted company indeed. I understand that the talks will shortly be made available from the website for those who are interested. My talk seemed to go down ok, but I'm not sure that we are quite close enough to the NWP problems to be giving something back to this community yet. We are working on it!

The final session is thinning out, with people drifting off home. I've come away with at least 2 copper-bottomed ideas for future work which will substantially advance on our existing methods. That ceraintly makes it a success in my book...now all I need is a few more hours in the day to work on them.

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