Climate predictions provide key scientific input into climate policy - and will continue to do so in future years. Professor Tim Palmer, Co-Director of the Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate, will discuss how scientific and technical advances can be expected to improve our climate predictive capability in the coming years - for example through the application of inexact supercomputers, about which James Martin himself was especially enthusiastic. With projects like the Large Hadron Collider in mind, Tim will also discuss possible changes in the way climate prediction science organises itself internationally. Finally, Tim will address the important question of how to attract more mathematicians and theoretical physicists into the field of climate science.

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About the speaker

Professor Tim Palmer is Co-Director of the Programme on Modelling and Predicting Climate at the Oxford Martin School; Principal Investigator on the Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship; Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, University of Oxford; and Professorial Fellow at Jesus College.

His DPhil was in general relativity theory after which he moved into the field of weather and climate dynamics and prediction, first at the UK Meteorological Office and then at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts.In 2010 he returned to Oxford as a “2010 Anniversary” Royal Society Research Professor, one of the positions created to commemorate the Royal Society’s 350th Anniversary. He has been a visiting scientist at the University of Washington and was a Rothschild Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge.

He has been involved in all five IPCC assessment reports, has coordinated two European Union climate projects, and was co-chair of the international scientific steering group of the World Climate Research Programme project (CLIVAR) on climate variability and predictability.He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003, and served on the Royal Society Council in 2008-9.In 2011-12 he was President of the Royal Meteorological Society.

He has served on a number of government committees looking at issues from climate adaptation to the role of science in helping mitigate the humanitarian impact of natural disasters. He served on a number of advisory committees, including the Met Office's Scientific Advisory Committee. He has won prizes from a number of learned societies and academies, in the UK and overseas, including the top prizes of the American and European Meteorological Societies. In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Professor Tim Palmer was awarded a CBE in the New Year's Honours List 2015 for Services to Science.