Opinion- Climate Change and Mathematics

The editorial board of Sankhya, department of mathematics of Miranda House, is elated to bring to you an opinion article on Climate Change and Mathematics that carefully explains the nexus between the two subjects and affirms that with the help of later we can precisely calculate and device methods to mitigate any ordeal in terms of the former.

Climate Change And Mathematics

An outsized public event: "Climate Change: From Global Models to Local Action,” was organized by MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute), Research Institute in Oakland, California, was organized in the spring of 2007 to look at some political and economic aspects of climate: what we know, what we guess, how much our society can and should answer to what we are learning. A scientific symposium followed the public discussion on subsequent two days during which mathematicians from many various fields mixed with economists, climate modelers, and others who have already been working on the many questions involved. Those events were organized with the motive of connecting the mathematical community with the simplest current research and brooding about climate change, and to take out the various mathematical challenges being presented by this issue. Society needs to know more and more accurately about what is happening with the earth's climate and to prepare for any necessary action that is practical to undertake. Mathematics and statistics already play a pivotal role during this as in any kind of modeling effort.

How Does Climatology Need Mathematics?

Learning mathematics boosts abstract thinking which is an important tool for anyone curious about climate issues. Climate may be about weather statistics and thus global climate change is a statistical phenomenon, the consequences of which are seen within the world around us. Large-scale applications of mathematics are required in climate science. There is a need for Mathematics to describe and project changing climatic conditions and communicate with those findings. To explain the changing climate, we'd like to understand first of all what's “normal”. To understand this, environmental measurements concerning temperature, rainfall, snow cover, sea level, amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, etc. need to be calculated. To determine whether the climate has changed and how, we'll be calculating averages, analyzing variance, and making diagrams.

A model on basic dynamics of the atmosphere and ocean has been created by Richard P. Mc Gehee, a Mathematician at the University of Minnesota. Description of his models includes the basic interactions among the atmosphere, the shallow ocean, and the deep ocean. It has only three differential equations but these vastly simplified models make predictions within the range of the predictions described in the IPCC report.

Mc Gehee made a linear model of the transmission among these three and diagonalized it. Half of the atmospheric CO2 “goes away” into the ocean “quickly” in a few decades. Rest half goes away in a few centuries. A variety of parameter choices for this model can be fitted in the twentieth century. Mc Gehee concluded that to predict the magnitude of the climate change under various emission scenarios, extremely simple models can be useful in situations where AOGCMs ( Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model ) are too complex to be useful.

Mathematical modeling with differential equations and stochastic models is required to predict future climate. The climate arises from the interaction of the energy coming from the sun with the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice, and the vegetation. For weather forecasting, the law of physics is the Navier-Stokes partial differential equations of fluid motion on a rotating sphere (which describe the evolution of the momentum and energy of the air and the oceans), which are coupled to the Laws of Thermodynamics (which describe the evolution of the temperature, and the effect of heat on from the Sun on air, water and water vapor). Together these equations are:

The Met Office (The Meteorological Office) solves these equations every six hours, to produce a five-day weather forecast by using a computer. The first idea of doing this came from L F Richardson and his envisaged computer was a room full of students. His idea was to divide up the Earth, its atmosphere, and oceans into a large number of small cubes. These complex climate models require, inter alia, different types of atmospheric, oceanic, and cloud modeling as well as modeling of their interconnectedness. As a result, we'll get various projections of future changes within the climate. These models can be useful for decision-makers, businesses, and active citizens pondering action over climate change mitigation.

Mathematics: An alternative to climate change

The effects of climate change can be felt on many levels, and knowledge is vital to safeguard human health and livelihoods. The understanding of probability and uncertainty is used by Mathematicians to advise policymakers on the likelihood of heatwaves, floods, or other changes in weather patterns and help them to plan accordingly. Businesses can have detailed information on how climate might affect them like the food industry is highly dependent on agriculture and could use warnings of an upcoming drought as an example to organize themselves for smaller yields.

Mathematicians need to communicate the importance of their work clearly and effectively to have a real impact on our planet. This may have a lot of scope for technology, business, and diplomacy and can also generate employment in the course. Economy and climate can be single-handedly uplifted if we wisely implement mathematical concepts in the climate study.

- Sheetal Sharma, H2B