Meetings and events

CliMathNet organises and co-sponsors a range of events. We are also happy to publicise relevant events organised by others via our newsletter.

ReCoVER funding, which is connected with CliMathNet, also supports the running of workshops and meetings.  These are listed in the events below.

Annual meetings

These are open to all Members of the network and interested parties:

Hot Topic workshops and related events

Over the course of the CliMathNet funding period (2012 to 2015), funding enabled Hot Topic workshops and scientific meetings for network members that addressed important climate related topics, shared research findings and considered future research opportunities.  Further information on these meetings can be found below.  Since April 2015, the network subsidiary ReCoVER (Research on Changes of Variability and Environmental Risk) has taken over in terms of supporting funding of events.  For further information regarding the funding opportunities available via ReCoVER, please follow the following web-link: .  The ReCoVER project continues until 31st June 2018.

Upcoming events:

  • CliMathNet conference, Reading, 18-21 Sept 2018

Previous events:

  • CliMathNet conference, Reading, 29th Aug-1st Sept 2017
  • , 10-12th April 2017, Dartington Hall, Devon (joint PEN/ReCoVER)
  • , Exeter 20-22nd March 2017
  • , 23-24th January 2017, Rougemont Hotel, Exeter (joint BRIM/ReCoVER)
  • CliMathNet conference 2016, Exeter 5th-8th July 2016
  • CliMathNet Virtual Outreach Conference: Reaching out from Maths and Environmental Science. 2 - 4pm, 21st June 2016. An online conference streamed live via WebEx.
  • Big Bang Fair South West 2016. 29th June 2016, University of Exeter. CliMathNet / ReCoVER will be hosting a stand at this event
  • . 17 - 20th April 2016. Dartington Hall, Totnes, UK. This workshop was hosted by Tim Lenton (University of Exeter) and followed on from the Tipping Points meeting that was hosted by Marten Scheffer and Sebastian Bathiany in Amsterdam last year (2015). The aim of the workshop was to further progress the discussions had in Amsterdam; to work towards the development of some joint paper(s); and to link up with part of the new 'CRITICS' EU network of PhD students studying critical transitions.
  • Computational and Data Challenges in Environmental Modelling. 10th February 2016. Issac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK.
  • . 14th - 15th January 2016. Birmingham. The aim of the workshop was to explore themes for research that may in the long term help manage the relationship between variability of weather/climate and of water/energy use.
  • Statistics for Climate Science: A course for Principal Investigators, 18th September 2015. Council Chamber, Royal Statistical Society, London, UK. CliMathNet, the Royal Meteorological Society and the Royal Statistical Society jointly ran a small focused workshop on the use of statistical techniques for senior climate scientists. This course was aimed at climate scientists at the Principal Investigator level and included lectures and workshops on statistical modelling, inference, Bayesian methods and risk and uncertainty.
  • XXXV Dynamics Days Europe 2015: Wednesday 9th September 2015. Two CliMathNet funded minisymposia were held during the 35th edition of Dynamics Days Europe, a major international conference with a long-standing tradition in non-linear dynamics. The conference was hosted by the Centre for Systems, Dynamics and Control at the University of Exeter.
    10:00 - 12:00. Wednesday 9th September. Response, variability and transitions in geographical systems. Prof. V. Lucarini & Dr. A. von der Heydt.
    16:30 - 18:30. Wednesday 9th September. Nonlinear and stochastic dynamics in weather and climate science. Dr. F. Kwasniok.
  • The Role of Statistics in the Analysis of Climate Models. Wednesday 9th September 2015. This event, as part of the Royal Statistical Society Annual Conference 2015, was organised by Daniel Williamson and the ESS Section (with support from the CliMathNet Network). The session focused on the use of very large, complex non-linear models to analyse and predict the climate and explored the statistical analysis of such models and how statisticians can contribute to the climate debate. Topics covered include: climate prediction, data assimilation, model calibration and pattern scaling. Presentations included Peter Challenor (Exeter): Introduction - a statistician’s introduction to climate models;        Richard Chandler (UCL): Analysing Multi-model ensembles; Richard Wilkinson (Nottingham): What drives the glacial-interglacial cycle? A Bayesian solution to a long standing model selection problem;        Peter Good (Met Office): Pattern Scaling; Danny Williamson (Exeter): Earth system models and probabilistic Bayesian calibration: a screw meets a hammer?
  • Decision analysis for policy support in climate change adaptation and mitigation, Exeter, 20th-21st April 2015.  This workshop brought scientists from a broad spectrum of the climate community together with decision makers, policy advisors, and members of the statistical and decision analysis communities to faciliate research and knowledge transfer. There was a series of talks from each of the different communities focused on relevant existing tools for decision support, including description of different climate models, products and data as well as general methodology from decision analysis and talks from the user community. Breakout sessions were employed to encourage ideas for novel multi-disciplinary approaches to the provision of decision support and the development of policy support tools, both within the current constraints of the available models and processes generated for the IPCC cycle (for example, CMIP); and with an eye on more idealized or blue-sky frameworks specifically tailored to the requirements of policy makers.
  • Non-equilibrium Dynamics of Climate: linking models to data, Dartington Hall, 5th-7th January 2015.  Understanding the earth’s climate system poses many of the challenges that exist more widely in systems far from equilibrium. There are non-linear processes acting across a broad range of spatio-temporal scales, the system is driven and is far from equilibrium. In addition, we have only one realization of our (changing) climate and observational data is very limited. This workshop sought to bring some of the ideas and methodology of non-equilibrium dynamics to bear on understanding the dynamics and variability of climate events, extremes and the emergence of spatio-temporal correlations.
  • Climate Variability: from Data and Models to Decisions, Lorentz Centre, Leiden, 1-5 December 2014
  • Workshop on Scalability, ECMWF, Reading, 14-15 April 2014.
    ECMWF held this meeting to focus on the challenges of highly parallel computing in areas such as observational data processing, data assimilation, the formulation of the model dynamical core and model output management have lead to the formulation of a Scalability Project at ECMWF. The project will coordinate resources defining the future forecasting system across all scales. This will be in preparation for future high-performance computing architectures aiming at accurate, efficient and scalable algorithms and code structures.
    The Scalability Project will rely heavily on external partnerships with numerical weather prediction centres, high performance computing centres, academia and hardware providers. To prepare this collaboration ECMWF held this workshop which included presentations covering weather and climate science applications at scale, as well as numerical algorithm and hardware aspects towards exa-scale high-performance computing.
  • Mathematics for Forecasting Environmental Change Workshop, Exeter, 17 March 2014. The EPSRC have released a call for networks in this area. At this workshop, some key speakers gave thought-provoking insights in areas where the mathematical sciences may be able to offer value and bring new knowledge. The event included an opportunity for all participants to consider project ideas and to respond to the call from EPSRC.
  • Diderot Mathematical Forum 2013, Mathematics of Planet Earth, Berlin/Exeter/Zagreb, December 17th 2013
    The cycle of conferences Diderot Mathematical Forum was introduced by the European Mathematical Society  http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/ in 1996. Each conference takes place simultaneously in three European cities exchanging information by telecommunication, addresses a specific topic, and has both a research and a public component. This Diderot Mathematical Forum was also a part of the Unesco year Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013  http://mpe2013.org/. The Forum took place on December 17, 2013, in Berlin (Germany), Exeter (United Kingdom) and Zagreb (Croatia). In each of the cities several talks on applications of mathematics to various topics related to planet Earth (meteorology and climate, oceanology, ecology, crystallography, etc.) were given, and the conference ended with a round table discussion held simultaneously in all the three cities.
  • Workshop on Global Invariance in Yearly Temperature Volatility: A Conservation Property Implicit in Governing Climate PDEs?, Cambridge Newton Institute, 26th November 2013, 1pm-5pm
    The purpose of this workshop was to scope the potential for new mathematical insights to explain many interesting and emerging features of global variability in the climate system,. Some questions will be presented as open mathematical problems, and we hope to build a team who can take such analysis forward over the coming months and years.
  • Workshop on Tipping Points: Fundamentals and Applications, ICMS Edinburgh, 9-13th September, 2013
    This focus meeting of the UK CliMathNet and the US MCRN is part of the international scientific initiative ''Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013''. It brings together mathematicians and statisticians, whose research expertise is relevant to investigating threshold behaviour in complex environmental systems, with the climate scientists and ecologists who exploit mathematical modeling in their research on tipping phenomena.
    In the last few years, the idea of tipping points has especially caught the imagination in environmental science due to the possibility, also indicated by both paleoclimate data and General Circulation Models, that the Earth system may abruptly change or tip from one regime to another in a comparatively short time. What is more, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) have presented very strong evidence based on the observations of the mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, and sea-ice cover, and warned that we might currently be undergoing one of these changes.
    However, there is a gap between the tipping phenomena in the complex world of science and the currently available mathematical and statistical theory that needs to be tackled from both ends. The main goal of this workshop is to respond to the mathematical difficulties involved in narrowing this gap by giving a common platform for early-stage and leading researchers, some newly drawn to the topic through the different ERC, UK and NSF networks, to meet and share their ideas. Organisers: M. Gidea (Chicago, MCRN) J. Sieber (Exeter, CliMathNet),  M. Silber (Chicago, MCRN), S. Wieczorek (Exeter, CliMathNet).

Policymaker meetings

These are by invitation and are held in London in January each year. Their purpose is to promote dialogue between policymakers and academics on the current challenges and necessary improvements in climate prediction.