Will the Climate Change Mathematics?

Series
Other Talks
Time
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - 3:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
IBB 1128
Speaker
Christopher Jones – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Mathematics
Organizer
Howie Weiss

Please Note: Joint colloquium between the School of Physics & the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences hosted by Predrag Cvitanovi. To schedule a meeting with the speaker.

Computational models of the Earth system lie at the heart of modern climate science. Concerns about their predictions have been illegitimately used to undercut the case that the climate is changing and this has put dynamical systems in an awkward position. I will discuss ways that we, as a community, can contribute by highlighting some of the major outstanding questions that drive climate science, and I will outline their mathematical dimensions. I will put a particular focus on the issue of simultaneously handling the information coming from data and models. I will argue that this balancing act will impact the way in which we formulate problems in dynamical systems.