Mathematics Awareness Month

Public Lecture

April 17, 5:00pm

PSH 152

Speaker: Lord Julian Hunt, frs

Professor Hunt's current position is Visiting Fellow of the Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Centre in Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and an Honorary Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge. He is also a J.M. Burgers visiting professor at the Delft University of Technology and Visiting Professor at Arizona State University. <more about Julian Hunt>

Link to the State Press story

Topic :Mathematics helps understand climate change and what to do about it

Abstract

The understanding of most very complex phenomena including climate change is based to a great extent on applying the ideas and techniques of mathematics, together with other relevant sciences ranging from physics to social sciences and economics. Studying the uncertain effects of humans on climate and human response to this realization is as essential as studying the coupled dynamics of atmospheres and oceans the biosphere. Climate prediction is based on the same mathematical and computational models, and analysis of shapes and patterns, that describe how water swirls in a bath tub, or bubbles in a cooking pot, and how water vapor condenses from a kettle. Since climate processes like these everyday examples are both deterministic and random, the mathematics of complex systems and statistics play an essential role in guiding governments and corporations in their difficult energy and environmental decisions which will have consequences for societies and the surface of the Earth for hundreds and thousands of years into the future.

Schedule of the Event

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