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The science of the atmosphere underpins some important scientific applications – most notably, our weather forecasts, but increasingly also the warnings of climate change.
The attention which the scientific discipline attracted was relatively low until about 1950; up to that point scientific respectability gradually emerged from myths and superstition.
Then suddenly a revolution happened, tied entirely to the invention of digital computing. Since 1950 this has led not only to amazing capabilities to predict the weather and climate but has also been one of the largest civilian drivers for advances in scientific computing. Now, with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, the science is being confronted by a new revolution. We are in the midst of this second revolution in atmospheric science, one in which 75 years of advances could be swept aside by new AI-based weather forecasts generated at a tiny fraction of the computing cost of traditional methods.
This lecture is a reflective look at what we can learn and deduce from scientific revolutions.
Professor Stephen Mobbs became Director of NERC’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science in 2005. His expertise is in atmospheric dynamics, with applications in boundary-layer and mesoscale meteorology and also in chemical transport. Much of his research involves atmospheric observations, combined with computational modelling.
Professor Mobbs received his BSc in Physics and PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Leeds. From 1996 he was head of the School of Environment and following the merger with Earth Sciences in 2003 he became head of the newly formed School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University. He is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and serves as a member of the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science and Atmospheric Cloud Dynamics.
