22. November 2023
Vortragender: Prof. Dr. Rupert Klein (Freie Universität Berlin)
"Mathematics, a key to climate research (How Mathematics helps structuring climate discussions)"
Beginn: 16:15 Uhr
Ort: HS 1.04, VSP 1
Abstract:
Mathematics in climate research is frequently thought to be mainly a provider of techniques for simulating the flows of the atmosphere and oceans, the motion and evolution of Earth’s ice masses, and the like. Three examples will elucidate that there is a much wider range of opportunities.
Climate modellers often employ reduced forms of “the continuum mechanical equations” to efficiently address their research questions of interest. The first example discusses how mathematical analysis can provide systematic guidelines for the regime of applicability of such reduced model equations.
Climate is defined as “weather statistics” over a time horizon of about 30 years, and climate research investigates its change in time in our “single realization of Earth” with all its complexity. The required reliable notions of time dependent statistics for sparse data in high dimensions, however, remain to be established. Recent mathematical research provides promising new data analysis techniques that systematically address the related "small data" problems.
Modern climate research has joined forces with economy and the social sciences to generate a scientific basis for informed political decisions in the face of global climate change. One major type of problems hampering progress of the related interdisciplinary research consists of often subtle language barriers. The third example describes how mathematical formalization of the notion of “vulnerability” has helped structuring related interdisciplinary research efforts.