IMAGe Theme of the Year
Summer Graduate School on Mathematics of Climate Change

Lectures: Abstracts and Presentations (pdf format)

  A Jormungand solution to the snowball paradox?, Dorian Abbot, University of Chicago

  Combining data and models, Dave Camp, California Polytechnic State University

  Combining data and models, Chris Danforth, University of Vermont

  Simple to intermediate models for climate change, Chris Forest, Penn State

  Reconstructing past climate, Pam Martin, University of Chicago

  Energy balance models, Dick McGehee, University of Minnesota

  An introduction to climate modeling, Doug Nychka, NCAR

  EOFs and spatial data/a>, Doug Nychka

  Tipping points in a simple model of Arctic sea ice, Mary Silber, University of Chicago

  Structure and chemistry of the atmosphere, Laura Voss, Bowdoin College

Climate change and critical behavior in sea ice,
Ken Golden, University of Utah
Earth's climate is changing, perhaps most visibly in the polar regions. For example, the summer Arctic sea ice pack has declined precipitously in the past few years. Most global climate models, however, have underestimated the decline.
In this talk, I will discuss key processes which must be represented more realistically in large-scale models to improve projections of the fate of Earth's sea ice packs and the response of polar ecosystems. Recent mathematical advances in characterizing the porous microstructure of sea ice, and the critical behavior of fluid flow through it, shed new light on such processes as melt pond evolution and snow-ice formation. Related results on electrical properties will help in monitoring these processes as well as sea ice thickness. Video from a 2007 Antarctic expedition where we measured fluid and electrical transport in sea ice will be shown.