CISL Annual Report 2005 > CISL research accomplishments

CISL research: The creation of IMAGe

When people ask "What is the purpose of the new math institute at NCAR?" our short reply is "It's about tools." An acknowledged hallmark of mathematical science is that the same mathematical and statistical methods can be used to solve problems in very different contexts. NCAR has a long history of supporting innovative models and developing new algorithms and methods. Moreover, NCAR's focus on grand challenges facing the geosciences also provides a rich source of new applications for mathematics.

The Institute for Mathematics Applied to the Geosciences (IMAGe) takes advantange of this confluence of tools and problems and accelerates the transfer of new mathematical techiniques to geoscience problems. It also serves as a portal for the mathematical sciences community to NCAR. IMAGe was started this year by combining three established groups at NCAR involving statistics, turbulence, and data assimilation.

Each of these groups has ties to many parts of NCAR and the university community, and these are expected to grow. One common thread among the IMAGe sections is the development of open source software to transfer mathematical tools and models to a wide group of scientists.

Perhaps the single most visible feature of IMAGe is a year-long program, the Theme-of-the-Year (TOY) that tackles particular problems in the geosciences or in a mathematical field through a series of focused workshops and a visitor program. The pilot TOY on Data Assimilation for the Geophysical Systems involved partnerships with the NSF mathematics centers SAMSI and IPAM and launched IMAGe's first thematic workshop Fusing Geophysical Models with Data.