One of the reasons for designating 2013 as the year of “Mathematics of Planet Earth” is to showcase the work done by mathematics in application areas like climate, ocean, and earth sciences. The SIAM Conference on CS&E, which begins on February 25th, contains many sessions relevant to MPE 2013.
The SIAM Conference on CS&E (Computational Science and Engineering) focuses on computational methods, often in the context of an application. For example, the session on adjoint methods in the earth sciences focuses on a specific set of mathematical and computational methods for solving inverse problems, but with particular application to problems in seismology, meteorology, and geodynamics. Another example occurs in the control of air flow in commercial buildings – an important development for minimizing energy consumption – where model reduction techniques are developed and used for energy-efficient building design. Other examples are sessions on modeling and simulation of complex energy systems, such as the electrical power grid and cascading power system failures. New numerical tools are explored for improved modeling of weather, climate, and the oceans; these include cubed-sphere grids for atmospheric models, such as modeling tropical cyclones. Other sessions look at models for earthquake rupture dynamics. Sessions also look at new computational methods, such as using implicit solvers to overcome scale disparities, for various atmospheric and ocean models which are essential components in climate models. It is the mathematical models and computational methods that enable accurate models and predictive simulations that are essential for understanding the various phenomena relevant to planet earth.
More reports on some of these will follow at a later date.
Click here for more information on the SIAM Conference on CS&E.