Stochastic Physics and Climate Modelling

Tim Palmer is Head of the Probability Forecasting and Diagnostics Division at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). He has won the Royal Society Esso Energy Award, the Royal Meteorological Society Adrian Gill Prize, and the American Meteorological Society Jule Charney Award. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Meteorological Society, the American Meteorological Society, and Academia Europaea. He is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-chair of the Scientific Steering Group of the UN World Meteorological Organisation's Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) project, and coordinator of two European Union climate prediction projects (PROVOST and DEMETER). He has had numerous appearances on radio and TV, in relation to weather, climate and chaos theory, and has co-edited another book with Cambridge University Press - Predictability of Weather and Climate - in 2006. Paul Williams is a Research Fellow at the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading. He has won the Royal Astronomical Society Blackwell Prize (2004) and the Royal Meteorological Society Rupert Ford Award (2005), and has received a prestigious Crucible Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (2007). He was the lead author of a climate change report commissioned and published by the European Parliament (2004). He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, the Institute of Physics, and the Royal Astronomical Society. His research findings have been reported widely in the media, including feature articles in New Scientist and the Financial Times, and a panel discussion on BBC Radio 4.