Description

Climate change is one of the largest issues that will determine our future. There is considerable uncertainty as to the nature and extent of the changes that may occur and the ways in which such changes will be influenced by human behaviour, for example in levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

One of the major sources of information in assessing such uncertainty is by the analysis of computer simulators based on mathematical models of global climate, based on the solution of equations describing the evolution of climate over time. There are many approximations and uncertainties involved in matching the output of such simulators with actual climate. For example, to evaluate a climate model requires the specification of a collection of input parameters, whose true values are unknown. The evaluation of the model with any individual choice of input parameters takes a long time (from days to months) and so there are practical difficulties in identifying sensible choices of input parameters, quite apart from all of the other uncertainties involved in matching the computer model to the real climate system.

Members of the Durham Mathematics department, are part of a consortium (with the University of Reading, the National Oceanography Centre of Southampton, the Met Office, Imperial College, the British Antarctic survey, and ClimatePrediction.net at Oxford) who are concerned with issues related to rapid climate change, and in particular are focusing on the likelihood and potential impact of a collapse in the Meridional Overturning Circulation system, which acts as a major source of heat transport around the world. As members of this consortium, we have access to a large ensemble of evaluations of runs of models developed by the Met Office, where each evaluation is made under a different choice of input parameters, and a different scenario for future carbon dioxide emissions.

This ensemble is a rich source of information about potential future climate behaviour. This project will be concerned with the analysis of selected model output data, relating to important aspects of potential climate change, based on statistical modelling of the relationship between these outputs and the model inputs and, in particular, the levels of global CO2 concentrations.

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Resources

More details about the Rapid Climate Change project are given at

the home-page for Rapid-Watch