Will the Climate Change Mathematics?

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. It is important that we extricate ourselves from this situation as climate science, whose true objective is to build an understanding of how the climate works, badly needs our expertise.

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 whch we formulate problems in dynamical systems.

Christopher Jones, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, and University of Warwick, United Kingdom

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