The role of complex modelling in climate science
When climate models first emerged some 40 years ago, it was unclear whether anything useful could be obtained from the necessarily crude representations of climate processes contained within them. But in the subsequent four decades, the early successes in prediction and understanding have been replicated many times, and climate models have emerged as a dominant tool in discussing past, present and future climate change. I will discuss the history of climate modelling, the ‘philosophy’ of model development and the new challenges posed by the onset of ‘big data’.
Click here to register for this free event.
This event is co-hosted by: SFU Department of Geography and the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.
Dr. Gavin Schmidt is the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and works on the simulation of climate in the past, present and possible futures. He was the author with Joshua Wolfe of “Climate Change: Picturing the Science “in 2009, and in 2011 was the inaugural recipient of the AGU Climate Communications Prize. He is a fellow of the AGU and AAAS. His 2014 TED Talk (in Vancouver) has been viewed over a million times.
