This mini-meeting is designed to foster interaction between statisticians and oceanographers with a common interest in inverse problem methods. Oceanography has evolved very quickly over the past decade with the increasing realization of the ocean's importance to climate around the globe, the implementation of large field experiments such as the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, and with the development of new technologies to measure temperature, movement, and other quantities in the ocean from space with satellites. A major effort is being made to integrate diverse observations and analyze larger datasets; these efforts are challenging because of the basic complexity of the ocean and climate system. Variability exists at the longest and shortest space and time scales, and little is presently known about the spatial and temporal coherence of ocean circulation.
Furthermore, despite the observational efforts, datasets are typically sparse, and methods of analysis typically must incorporate dynamical information about the circulation in order to proceed. Studies of the basic statistical variability, mapping, estimation, and more sophisticated forward and inverse modeling techniques are being developed and used in the oceanography community to determine circulation. On the other hand, a large variety of inferential methods for the study of indirect or sparsely measured phenomena, including Bayesian techniques and nonparametric smoothing for spatio-temporal data, have been developed by statisticians in recent years. A 1994 National Research Council panel (Statistics and Physical Oceanography) encouraged collaboration between statisticians and oceanographers in a number of areas, including inverse problem methods. So the time is ripe for a fruitful interaction between the oceanographic and statistics communities to discuss this topic.
The meeting had an informal workshop flavor, open to anyone interested in attending. There was no registration fee. A poster session was organized for all presentations other than invited talks. We originally intended that a record of the invited talks would be made available through this web page, but speakers were reluctant to send summaries of their talks after the meeting, so that idea fell by the wayside. However, e-mail addresses are provided above, and we encourage anyone interested to ask the speakers for further information about their talks.
Persons interested in attending or in presenting a poster were asked to notify:
Pam McGhee
Department of Statistics
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4330
e-mail: mcghee@stat.fsu.edu
8:30 a.m. - Pick-up time for rides to Dirac Science Library
from Holiday Inn and Doubletree hotels
8:40 a.m. - Refreshments
9:00 a.m. - Welcome
9:15 a.m. - Carl Wunsch
Statistical Issues Raised by Ocean Data Assimilation, and other Stories
Discussant: Paul Switzer
10:30 a.m. - Break
11:00 a.m. - Grace Wahba
Covariance Modeling for Atmospheric
and Ocean Data Assimilation
Discussant: Paul Switzer
12:15 p.m. - Lunch
2:00 p.m. - Keith Haines
Diagnostics of Thermodynamic
Bias in Ocean Data Assimilation
Discussant: Chris Wikle
2:45 p.m. - Armin Koehl
Discussant: Michael Lavine
3:30 p.m. - Break
4:00 p.m. Poster session
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14:
8:30 a.m. - Pick-up time for rides to Dirac Science Library
from Holiday Inn and Doubletree hotels
8:40 a.m. - Refreshments
9:00 a.m. - Chris Wikle
Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling of Air-Sea Interaction
Discussant: Keith Haines
9:45 a.m. - Susan Lozier and Michael Lavine
Discussant: Armin Koehl
10:45 a.m. - Break
11:15 a.m. - Francois-Xavier Le Dimet
Errors and Data Assimilation
Discussant: Grace Wahba
12:00 a.m. - Open discussion
All talks and the poster session took place in the Seminar Room on the 4th floor of Dirac Science Library. To find the Dirac Science Library and the Oceanography/Statistics Building, see the campus map.
Special rates were arranged at two hotels within a few blocks of the downtown walking tour sights, and we advised "Be sure to request the FSU-Department of Statistics group block rate when making reservations." The locations of these hotels are shown on the map.
Holiday Inn Select
Downtown Capital Hill
316 W. Tennessee St.
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Phone: 800-648-6135
Rate $79 (if reserved by Oct 29)Doubletree Hotel
101 S. Adams St.
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Phone: 850-224-5000
Rate $89 (if reserved by Oct 29)
Downtown Tallahassee
For travel by interstate, Tallahassee is just off I-10 at the east edge of Florida's Panhandle.
