Timothy N. Palmer
University of Oxford
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Primary Section: 16, Geophysics Secondary Section: 13, Physics Membership Type:
International Member
(elected 2020)
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Biosketch
PhD in general relativity theory under Dennis Sciama. Worked at Met Office and European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts. Pioneered the development of Ensemble Prediction Systems. Now Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at Jesus College Oxford.
Research Interests
A theme common to much of Tim Palmer’s research has been nonlinearity. In his PhD he provided a first fully covariant quasi-local formulation of gravitational energy momentum in general relativity. Working in middle atmosphere dynamics he co-discovered the world’s largest breaking waves in the stratosphere. This work led to the widespread use of potential vorticity as a global diagnostic of the global circulation in both the stratosphere, the troposphere and in the oceans. Variations in predictability associated with the nonlinear dynamics of weather and climate underpins the necessity for developing the ensemble prediction techniques in operational weather and climate forecasting which Palmer has pioneered. As part of this work, Palmer introduced the notion of stochastic parametrisation into ensemble forecasting and showed that the nonlinear rectification effect of noise could help reduce some of the systematic errors in conventional deterministic climate models. Palmer has emphasised the role of nonlinear circulation regimes in framing the regional response to climate change. In recent years he has been a strong advocate for dramatically increasing the resolution of climate models in order, amongst other things, that long-lived circulation regimes can be modelled with more fidelity. In foundational physics he has promoted the role of fractal state-space geometry as a means to understand the apparent nonlocality of quantum physics.
