DED on arrival: Data, Extremes, and Dynamics
Date:
An opportunity to present research closer to home, just 4 flights of stairs up!
Abstract
In a presentation geared towards newly arrived members of our community, I will discuss a research project led by a former PhD student. The goal was to use data-driven methods (statistical and machine learning models) to explore the dynamics of extreme events in our atmosphere. The talk will highlight thesis work by Justin Finkel, where he used short trajectories from a large ensemble weather prediction dataset to probe extreme events in the stratosphere. I’ll discuss how the statistics of rare events can be devilishly hard to estimate without a tremendous amount of data, and how we used this “ensemble of opportunity” (academese for model integrations done for another purpose) to estimate the statistics of extremely rare Sudden Stratospheric Warming events using a general mathematical framework for exploring rare events. This project was the fruit of a collaboration with Jonathan Weare and Dorian Abbot (Chicago), and I hope to encourage our PhD students and postdocs to collaborate with faculty across the math department and beyond.