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December 2004 - January 2005
IMAGe
comes into focus
Doug Nychka, organizer of the statistics program at NCAR,
has been named the first director of the new Institute for
Mathematics Applied to Geosciences (IMAGe).
Doug Nychka. |
“I’m excited about IMAGe,” Doug says. “It’s
very significant for NCAR to form a group that is oriented
around cross-cutting methods as opposed to being oriented
around a scientific topic.”
IMAGe, one of the new institutes created by the NCAR reorganization,
is charged with applying mathematical tools to address fundamental
problems in the geosciences. It brings together NCAR’s
Geophysical Turbulence Program, the Geophysical Statistics
Project, and the Data Assimilation Initiative. At first,
the institute will consist of about two dozen staffers. (For
more about the NCAR reorganization, see the March 2004 issue
of Staff Notes Monthly.)
Doug says one of his first priorities is to map out an annual
mathematical program, or theme of the year (TOY), that addresses
NCAR scientific goals and also engages the mathematics community.
This spring, IMAGe will conduct a pilot TOY on data assimilation.
Central to numerical weather forecasting, data assimilation
uses statistical methods for combining numerical models with
observed data. The TOY will also look
at a more recent application: studying the behavior of the
atmospheric component of a global coupled model by its forecasting
ability.
For this project, IMAGe will collaborate with two mathematical
centers: the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM)
at the University of California, Los Angeles; and the Statistical
and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) in North
Carolina.
In 2006, IMAGe will likely focus on the challenges of working
with models that incorporate processes occurring on different
spatial and temporal scales. It will collaborate with the
Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science at New York University’s
Courant Institute of Mathemathical Sciences.
Doug also hopes to launch informal working groups involving
staffers from IMAGe as well as NCAR labs. Some topics would
include comparing climate models of intermediate complexity
to the historical record, adding stochastic (randomly forced)
elements to geophysical models, and using wavelet methods
to represent the varied small-scale components in large-scale
fields.
A senior scientist who has led the Geophysical Statistics
Project for seven years, Doug has a Ph.D. in statistics from
the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He previously
had been a professor at North Carolina State University.
•David
Hosansky
On the Web
IMAGe
Also in this issue...
The 2004 Outstanding Accomplishment
Awards
Prospecting
for ice
Recollections
from a pioneering woman scientist
Native
American visitors
Turning
off the juice
Delphi
questions
Happy
Holidays!
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