Climate Change
April 1, 2008

The purpose of this Colloquia was to bring together students in Marine Sciences, Mathematics, and Geological Sciences to analyze and debate models of climate change, including both those that predict its inevitability and those that deny its existence.

As students entered the room, they found several items on their tables designed to spur questions about the impact and importance of global warming: a chart of global temperatures, a bowl of ice, a photograph of refugees from Darfur, and a statement from Sen. James Inhofe that claims "global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Each table considered three questions during the course of the evening:
1) Is climate change real?
2) What will happen?
3) What would you advise the next president of the United States to do?

Two representative from each class began the program by introducing the work they had done in their own courses. Dinner was served, and over their meal each table contemplated the objects at their table and discussed their particular course's perspective on these climate change questions. After dinner, students from each class formed a panel and responded to the question: "Is it troublesome that human activity impacts the earth and how do you best  predict what the impact will be?" When each course presented its particular take on this question, the moderators opened up the floor for questions, and a lively discussion ensued as students shared the results of their dinner conversation and the prompts on the tables.

Courses involved:

GEOL073: Global Climate Change and Global Warming: The Science and the History.
Jose Rial.
Global warming is the most important environmental problem of the 21st century. The international scientific community agrees that the world today is significantly warmer than it was a century ago and that drastic climate change will be common in the 21st century. This seminar explores the geologic history of global warming, its physical principles and the prospects for the future on the basis of the history as it is recorded in deep seas sediments, ice cores, tree rings and other important proxies. The students will learn to interpret these data and extrapolate them to the near future, for the world and for North Carolina. Students will discuss and debate the economic, social, and political aspects of global warming, and how ours and other advanced societies are coping with the problem.

MASC 052: Living With our Oceans and Atmosphere.
John M. Bane.
This course will introduce the student to the nature of the earth’s oceans and atmosphere, with emphasis on developing an understanding of the processes that lead to our weather patterns and global climate. Modern theories of changing weather, severe weather events, oceanic hazards, interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere, and oceanic and atmospheric changes that are linked to increasing human activity will be studied. Examples to presently active research being conducted at UNC and other institutions will be sued to highlight how the above topics are interrogated scientifically. Readings will be taken from introductory meteorology and oceanography textbooks; modern articles in periodicals such as Scientific American, Natures, American Scientist, and Weatherwise; numerous websites, including those within the UNC department of Marine Sciences; and video presentations. Classroom presentations in seminar format and group participation discussions and debates will be utilized. There may be a short field trip or two. Visits to active research laboratories and atmospheric projects will be made as possible. Grading will be based principally on homework assignments plus two exams.

Math 067: The Mathematics of Climate Change: Can We Predict the Future of Our Planet?
Chris Jones
There is widespread agreement in the scientific community that the Earth is warming. But, do we know when critical benchmarks will be reached? Planning and policy-making demand predictions of the future climate change and even specific climate events. But, how reliable are those predictions? The predictions are based largely on mathematical models of the “Earth” system in varying degrees of complexity. But, there are untold assumptions and estimations being fed into these models, so can we rely on their results? Even if we made extraordinarily good approximations to the input of these models, we know from our understanding of chaos in dynamical systems that small changes can lead to drastically different outcomes. Is it then possible to make predictions about future climates?

While background on climate change will be covered in this course, the emphasis will be on the issues surrounding the predictability of climate events and changes. We shall consider the limitations of mathematical models in relation to making predictions. Elementary explanations of chaotic behaviors will be presented and we will compare deterministic and statistical models in the context of the environment. Ways of measuring and presenting uncertainty using statistical estimators will be discussed. This is an exciting scientific area where applied mathematics and statistics come together with many scientific areas in an exposed political context that is of enormous importance to us all. There is plenty of room for different viewpoints and deep thinking about how mathematics can contribute.

Considerable time will be given to open discussion in class. There will be a weekly readings and each week a student will be expected to present a synopsis of the readings as part of the course requirement. Further, the students will each conduct a project related to the topic and report on it at the end of the semester.