Model Hierarchies in Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate Sciences

Abstract

This Oberwolfach workshop was dedicated to continuing the sequence on “Atmosphere-Ocean Science” from (2002, 2006, 2010). The spirit of these events is that of an open invitation to engage in an eye-level exchange on recent developments and pressing challenges in each of the participating disciplines, and to explore possible new routes of interdisciplinary cooperation. This workshop emphasized “model hierarchies” and their importance for the systematic development of both theoretical understanding and methods of scientific investigation. To limit its scope, the workshop focused on (i) scale interactions in the atmosphere and oceans, (ii) thermodynamics and multiphase processes, and (iii) tropical-extratropical interactions from the applied perspective. From a mathematics perspective, challenging aspects of the derivation, justification, and numerical integration of hierarchical reduced models were addressed. Moreover, the workshop explored the potential applicability in atmosphere-ocean science of exciting recent results of mathematical fluid dynamics on “rough path” stochastic modelling and “wild” weak solutions of the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations.