Mathematics of Climate

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

In this course, mathematics and statistics will used to answer current questions of interest in climate science and sustainability, and climate science will be used to motivate and explain techniques from applied mathematics and statistics. The course will emphasize conceptual models that capture important aspects of the Earth's climate system: Energy balance and temperature distribution, ocean circulation patterns such as the Gulf Stream and El Niño – Southern Oscillation, ice caps and glaciation periods, the carbon cycle, and the biological pump. Mathematical and statistical topics will be selected from theories and methodologies for dynamical systems, bifurcation theory, ordinary and partial differential equations, signal processing, regression analysis, extreme value theory, and data assimilation. Some knowledge of Matlab or R is needed.