OxTalks is Changing
OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Climate prediction: what is it and what is achievable?
What do we mean by climate prediction? If we had a perfect model of the real-world, physical climate system, how would we use it to make predictions of future climate under assumptions about future human behaviour (most notably, future greenhouse gas emissions)? I will discuss this question and illustrate the issues using a deterministic, low-dimensional, nonlinear dynamical system which parallels the high-dimensional Earth System Models used in climate science, climate impacts studies and climate policy.
Having discussed the essence of climate prediction, I will go on to reflect on the relationship between our non-perfect climate models and the real-world climate system, arguing that this relationship fundamentally changes the nature of what we can expect to learn from models about future climate in reality. In conclusion, I will argue for a radically new focus for climate models and climate model experiments; one which, given the threat that climate change represents for our societies and cultures, should be somewhat driven by the information needs of business, politics, finance and economics.
Date:
31 January 2025, 11:00
Venue:
Bill Roscoe Lecture Theatre, Wolfson Building, Department of Computer Science
Speaker:
Professor David Stainforth (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Organising department:
Department of Statistics
Organiser:
Professor Jotun Hein (Department of Statistics, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
events@stats.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Jotun Hein (Department of Statistics, University of Oxford)
Booking required?:
Not required
Booking email:
events@stats.ox.ac.uk
Cost:
No charge
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Beverley Lane
