Eddie Wilson

John Norbury

Alistair D. Fitt

Hilary Ockendon

The 15th European Conference on Mathematics for Industry was held in the agreeable surroundings of University College London, just 5 minutes walk from the British Museum in the heart of London, over the ?ve warm, sunny days from 30 June to 4 July 2008. Participants from all over the world met with the commonaimofreinforcingthe roleofmathematics asanoverarching resource for industry and business. The conference attracted over 300 participants from 30 countries, most of them participating with either a contributed talk, a minisymposium pres- tation or a plenary lecture. ‘Mathematics in Industry’ was interpreted in its widest sense as can be seen from the range of applications and techniques described in this volume. We mention just two examples. The Alan Tayler Lecture was given by Mario Primicerio on a problem arising from moving oil through pipelines when temperature variations a?ect the shearing properties of wax and thus modify the ?ow. The Wacker Prize winner, Master’s student Lauri Harhanen from the Helsinki University of Technology, showed how a novel piece of mathematics allowed new software to capture real-time images of teeth from the data supplied by present day dental machinery (see ECMI Newsletter 44). The meeting was attended by leading ?gures from government, bu- ness and science who all shared the same aim – to promote the application of innovative mathematics to industry, and identify industrial sectors that o?er the most exciting opportunities for mathematicians to provide new insight and new ideas.

Progress in Industrial Mathematics at ECMI 2008

Ian Roulstone

Invisible in the Storm is the first book to recount the history, personalities, and ideas behind one of the greatest scientific successes of modern times--the use of mathematics in weather prediction. Although humans have tried to forecast weather for millennia, mathematical principles were used in meteorology only after the turn of the twentieth century. From the first proposal for using mathematics to predict weather, to the supercomputers that now process meteorological information gathered from satellites and weather stations, Ian Roulstone and John Norbury narrate the groundbreaking evolution of modern forecasting. The authors begin with Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who in 1904 came up with a method now known as numerical weather prediction. Although his proposed calculations could not be implemented without computers, his early attempts, along with those of Lewis Fry Richardson, marked a turning point in atmospheric science. Roulstone and Norbury describe the discovery of chaos theory's butterfly effect, in which tiny variations in initial conditions produce large variations in the long-term behavior of a system--dashing the hopes of perfect predictability for weather patterns. They explore how weather forecasters today formulate their ideas through state-of-the-art mathematics, taking into account limitations to predictability. Millions of variables--known, unknown, and approximate--as well as billions of calculations, are involved in every forecast, producing informative and fascinating modern computer simulations of the Earth system. Accessible and timely, Invisible in the Storm explains the crucial role of mathematics in understanding the ever-changing weather. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

The Role of Mathematics in Understanding Weather

Invisible in the Storm

Invisible in the Storm is the first book to recount the history, personalities, and ideas behind one of the greatest scientific successes of modern times--the use of mathematics in weather prediction. Although humans have tried to forecast weather for millennia, mathematical principles were used in meteorology only after the turn of the twentieth century. From the first proposal for using mathematics to predict weather, to the supercomputers that now process meteorological information gathered from satellites and weather stations, Ian Roulstone and John Norbury narrate the groundbreaking evolution of modern forecasting. The authors begin with Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who in 1904 came up with a method now known as numerical weather prediction. Although his proposed calculations could not be implemented without computers, his early attempts, along with those of Lewis Fry Richardson, marked a turning point in atmospheric science. Roulstone and Norbury describe the discovery of chaos theory's butterfly effect, in which tiny variations in initial conditions produce large variations in the long-term behavior of a system--dashing the hopes of perfect predictability for weather patterns. They explore how weather forecasters today formulate their ideas through state-of-the-art mathematics, taking into account limitations to predictability. Millions of variables--known, unknown, and approximate--as well as billions of calculations, are involved in every forecast, producing informative and fascinating modern computer simulations of the Earth system. Accessible and timely, Invisible in the Storm explains the crucial role of mathematics in understanding the ever-changing weather.

John Norbury

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