PREDICTABILITY OF WEATHER AND CLIMATE: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE – FROM DAYS TO DECADES

A revolution in weather and climate forecasting is in progress, made possible as a result of theoretical advances in our understanding of the predictability of weather and climate, and by the extraordinary developments in supercomputer technology. Specifically, through ensemble prediction, weather and climate forecasting is set to enter a new era, addressing quantitatively weather and climate sensitive concerns in a range of commercial and humanitarian applications. This is possible because, through ensemble techniques, we can now tackle the problem of flow-dependent prediction of weather and climate risk. This paper gives some background to this revolution, with specific examples drawn from a range of timescales.

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