Advances in Weather and Climate Modeling November 12, 2014 5:30PM-8:00PM Drinks and hors d'oeuvres 5:30PM Program starts at 6:30PM Hess Club 5430 Westheimer Road Houston, TX 77056 Farmers and oil companies with offshore platforms know the importance of accurate weather forecasting. Hedge fund managers are making investments based on weather forecasts. Weather and climate drive our economy, government policy and political debate. So how reliable are our weather and climate models? Weather and climate models are probably different from any other type of model you may know. Imagined a hundred years ago and first implemented almost sixty years ago, the science of computer modeling of the atmosphere and the climate system has made tremendous progress, yet massive challenges remain. With a panel of world renowned experts, this program will explore recent scientific and technological advances in weather and climate modeling, and along the way discuss what's been learned about the factors controlling our weather and our ability to predict them. John Nielsen-Gammon, Regents Professor and Texas State Climatologist, Texas A&M University Robert E. Dickinson, Professor, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin Istvan Szunyogh, Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University Ramalingnam Saravanan, Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University Charles S. Jackson, Research Professor, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin Register at www.miteftexas.org $30 Members of MITEF and Guests of MITEF Members $30-40 Employees of MITEF sponsors depending upon sponsorship level (with coupon code)
$40 MIT Alumni Club (with coupon code) $50 General Admission $60 Late Registration -- After 5:00 pm, Nov 11, Pending Availability For more information contact Marc Wilkins (713) 839-0808, marc@amchouston.com Biographies Research Interests Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon REGENTS PROFESSOR, TEXAS A&M AND TEXAS STATE CLIMATOLOGIST Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990 S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987 S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984 Dr. Nielsen-Gammon s weather-related work involves jet streams, extreme rainfall events, and land and sea breezes. His air quality research includes field forecasting support, numerical simulation, and diagnostic analysis of ozone events in Houston and Dallas for the Texas Air Quality Studies in 2000 and 2005-6. Dr. Nielsen-Gammon has also worked on drought monitoring and forecasting, air pollution climatology, and improvements to the climate data record. He teaches courses in weather analysis, weather forecasting, climatology, and atmospheric dynamics. Dr. Nielsen-Gammon received a Presidential Faculty Fellow award (now known as PECASE) from the National Science Foundation and the White House in 1996, a Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching at Texas A&M University from the Association of Former Students in 1996, and was named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in 2011. He is Past President of the International Commission for Dynamical Meteorology and is past chair of the AMS Board on Higher Education. He has written articles for the Houston Chronicle and has been featured on BBC. Robert E. Dickinson DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN PH.D., MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, METEOROLOGY, 1966 MS., MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, METEOROLOGY, 1962 BA., HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS, 1961
Appointments 2008- present Professor, University of Texas, Austin TX 2000-2008 Endowed Chair, Georgia Power/Georgia Research Alliance, Atlanta GA 1999-2008 Professor, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 1993-1999 Regents Professor, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 1990-1993 Professor, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 1968-1990 Scientist, NCAR, CO 1966-1968 Research Associate, MIT, Cambridge MA Activities NRC, Member, Cmte. to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program (2011 present) NRC, Memebr, Cmte., A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling (2011 2012) NRC, Member, Cmte. on Assessment of Intraseasonal to Interannual Climate Prediction & Predictability (2008-2010) NRC, Report Coordinator, Stabilization Targets for Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentrations (2010) NRC, Report Review Cmte., Indicators for Understanding Global Climate Change (2009 2010) Biological & Environmental Research Advisory Committee (BERAC), Member (2006 2012) Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Editorial Board (2010 present) Dr. Istvan Szunyogh PROFESSOR OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, TEXAS A&M Ph.D., Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Earth Sciences, 1994 B.S., Eotvos Lorand University, Meterology, 1991 Dr. Szunyogh was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1967. He received his Diploma in Meteorology from the Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest in 1991 and his Doctoral Degree in Earth Sciences from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1994. He came to the United States in 1996, where he first worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Later he worked at the National Centers for Atmospheric Research (NCEP) and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) of the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. He has been a member of the faculty of
the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University since 2009, where he holds the title of full professor. Dr. Szunyogh co-authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles on atmospheric dynamics and numerical weather prediction and is the author of a recently published book on the same topics. He has has held different leaderships positions in international programs on weather prediction research. Most importantly, he has been a member of the International Core Steering Committee and one of the two Co-Chairs of the Predictability and Dynamical Processes Working Group of the World Weather Research Program THORPEX of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). THORPEX has been a decade-long coordinated effort of scientists from the academic and the operational weather prediction communities of five continents on weather prediction research. Dr. Ramalingam Saravanan PROFESSOR OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, TEXAS A&M Ph.D., Princeton University, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, 1990 M.Sc., Indian Institute of Technology, Physics, 1986 Dr. Ramalingam Saravanan is Professor of Atmospheric Science at Texas A&M University. He specializes in the area of climate theory and modeling, from monthly to millennial time scales. His work has also addressed stochastic dynamics, atmosphere-ocean interaction, climate extremes, and short-term climate prediction. In recent years, his research has focused on using supercomputers to carry out fine-scale regional simulations of extreme weather and climate phenomena such as hurricanes and droughts. He has taught courses in areas of meteorology, climate dynamics and applied statistics. Dr. Saravanan is currently a member of the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Atlantic (PIRATA) Science Dr. Saravanan received his M. Sc. in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1986 and his Ph.D. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from Princeton University in 1990. Prior to joining the Texas A&M faculty in 2005, Dr. Saravanan carried out postdoctoral research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and worked as a staff scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado. He has served as an editor of the Journal of Climate and was also a member of the National Research Council (NRC) Panel on Assessment of Intraseasonal to Interannual Climate Prediction and Predictability.
Dr. Charles Jackson RESEARCH SCIENTIST, INSTITUTE OF GEOPHYSICS, UT AUSTIN Ph.D., University of Chicago, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics BS., Haverford College, Physics Charles Jackson is currently a Research Scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin where he has been for the past 14 years. He received a bachelors degree in physics from Haverford College and a doctorate in geophysical fluid dynamics from the University of Chicago. Before starting his research position at the University of Texas, Jackson was a visiting scholar at Princeton University within the NOAA affiliated Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Jackson's research concerns the use of data to test physics-based numerical models of the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere particularly for phenomena that involve their interactions. He is interested in problems relating to abrupt climate change, the origin of cycles of ice age climate, projections of future climate and sea level rise. Jackson works with other scientists and statisticians to develop tools for quantifying uncertainties in models and data.