"Rossbypalooza", A Student-led Workshop at the Interface of Climate Dynamics and Statistics; Chicago, Illinois; July 25-29, 2016

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Climate science has historically progressed through the interweaving of observation, theory, and experiments/modeling. The discovery of phenomena in observed data, followed by careful and thoughtful analysis, leads to the proposal of mechanisms responsible for these phenomena, which are then tested through experimentation. In turn, the analysis of the observed data must be guided by theory. The modern explosion in the quantity and accessibility of observations of climate represents an unprecedented opportunity for enhancing our understanding of the Earth's climate. This potential will only be realized if we equip young scientists with the toolkits to both process and explain this data: theoretical framework of climate dynamics and application of statistics to various climate data. This project is to hold a weeklong workshop in which students will lectures on both climate science and statistical techniques, and work in small groups on research problems of their own choosing. It will provide a group of thirty graduate-level scientists with multi-disciplinary training necessary to analyze and understand climate data. The workshop will be held from July 25-29, 2016 in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, drawing from the strengths of faculty in Climate Dynamics as well as Statistics. Topics covered will include climate extremes, jet variability, large-scale transport and mixing, monsoons, turbulence, and geospatial time series analysis. This is a pilot program that has a potential to becoming an annual or biennial meeting in the subsequent years.