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SUMMARY:Building understanding from the ground up: hierarchical modelling 
 of the climate system - Dr Dan Jones\, British Antarctic Survey
DTSTART:20140227T131000Z
DTEND:20140227T140000Z
UID:TALK49556@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Aleksandr Sahakyan
DESCRIPTION:Earth’s climate system is fantastically complex\, involving 
 numerous coupled physical\, chemical\, and biological systems that can int
 eract across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.  Climate modelle
 rs attempt to get a handle on this knotty structure by constructing mathem
 atical representations of the climate system\, which are often realised on
  high-performance computing setups.  Such sophisticated numerical represen
 tations are crucially important for making accurate and precise prediction
 s about the future state of Earth’s climate\, but there is an inherent d
 anger in increasing the level of complexity in any model.  It is unfortuna
 tely easy to create a climate model that is nearly as inscrutable as the c
 limate system itself.  If we want to fully understand the dynamics of the 
 climate system\, a different approach is required.\n\nAs a complement to a
 ssembling collections of intricate\, realistic models\, we can consider _m
 odel hierarchies_ in which models of increasing complexity are compared wi
 th one another.  For the sake of clarity and simplicity\, the models at th
 e base of the hierarchy should only capture the essential dynamics of the 
 system or process in question while avoiding too many refinements.  Models
  further up the hierarchy include additional sources of complexity and aim
  to be more realistic.  Isaac Held and others have explored the idea of 
 “hierarchical modelling” in depth.  In this talk\, we examine a few mo
 del hierarchies from oceanography and climate science\, including a model 
 of how the global ocean adjusts to changes in wind stress at the surface a
 nd a basic model of climate sensitivity.    
LOCATION:1 Newnham Terrace\, Darwin College
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