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Predicting Weather and Climate:
A Risky Business?
Tim Palmer
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
It is no longer enough to forecast the likely future weather; increasingly, the public, disaster relief agencies, and commercial forecast users need to
know the changing risk of extreme weather events which on a day-to-day basis may be unlikely to occur, but have grave consequences on peoples' livelihoods
when they do occur. Ensemble forecast techniques, designed to estimate quantitatively weather and climate risk, will be discussed and examples shown. Simple analytic
decision models will be described, showing that in a chaotic world, ensemble forecasts are substantially more valuable economically than best-guess deterministic
forecasts. A number of specific examples of the application of ensemble forecasts of weather and climate risk, ranging from flooding, electricity generation,
stability of shipping and maritime oil pollution will be mentioned.
About the Lecturer
Dr. Palmer obtained his PhD from Oxford University in relativity theory, and is now Head of the Predictability and Seasonal Forecast Division of the European
Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. He is lead author of the 2001 Third Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and coordinator
of a major European Union multi-national project on the prediction of El Nino and other seasonal-timescale climate anomalies. His professional research is
largely associated with studies of climate predictability on timescales of days to decades.
See Also
CIRES Distinguished Lecture Series
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Tim Palmer
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