Tim Palmer: Mathematical physicist, climate dynamicist, poet, band leader

Jagadish Shukla

George Mason University, USA

I met Tim in May 1984, at Liege, Belgium, in a meeting on intercomparison of sensitivity of global atmospheric general circulation models to 1982–83 El Nino SST anomalies. He was conspicuous by his brilliance and his extraordinary ability to explain the scientific concepts. This meeting was the beginning of our long professional and family friendship. Little had I realized that I had met a modern-day renaissance man.

Tim’s early work at UK Met Office before he joined ECMWF, and my early work had similar lines of thinking. An underlying theme of some of our numerical experiments was to show that the slowly varying boundary conditions of sea surface temperature (SST) had significant influence on atmospheric circulation both locally and remotely. The impact of SST anomalies depends upon the fidelity of the models in simulating the mean climate, and that the impact of the SST anomaly also on the mean value of SST on which the SST anomalies were superimposed. Tim and his colleagues had shown that the response of a smaller SST anomaly in Western Pacific could be larger than a larger SST anomaly in the Eastern Pacific. Our collaboration on dynamical prediction of monthly and seasonal average circulation and rainfall became more organized when we were coordinating research by a group of researchers in the US under the banner of DSP (Dynamical Seasonal Prediction), and in Europe under the banner of PROVOST (PRediction Of climate Variations On Seasonal to interannual Time-scales). Tim also made significant contributions to the Monsoon Numerical Experiment Group (MONEG).

Tim was kind enough to agree to be a member of COLA’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). Tim and I worked closely to organize the First World Modeling Summit (WMS) at ECMWF. One of the outcomes of the WMS was a proposal to establish a few international climate modeling centers in the world which can simulate climate at kilometer scale. Although that proposal has not yet been realized, Tim has been relentless in pursuing this idea. Tim has written a number of scientific papers and popular articles to propose a climate CERN. Hopefully, Tim’s dream will come true in not too distant a future.

Tim is an original thinker who has expanded the boundaries of our field of research. He is one of those rare scientists who has written original papers in theoretical physics, advanced and implemented the concept of ensemble weather forecasting, improved weather and climate predictions by introducing stochastic terms in prediction models, pioneered the concept of reduced precision computing, and also is the leader of a band, plays guitar, and writes poetry (he wrote a beautiful poem about my mother). It was one of my own happy moments when Tim asked me to join his band to play drums during the World Modeling Summit dinner at ECMWF.

Tim and Gill have also visited the village of my birth in India, where my wife and I have established Gandhi College for education and empowerment of women. Tim, Gill, Mike and Susie Wallace, Peter Webster, and Ken Mooney have all visited and supported this college (see pictures). After staying in my village for a few days, we visited many other parts of India including Taj Mahal and had an overnight journey on a river boat in South India. The fond memories of Tim and Gill’s visit to my village will be cherished forever.