Teias Matemáticas : Comunicações

This talk will highlight possible future directions for global environmental science and the increasing opportunities that exist for interaction with the field of modern applied mathematics. Global environmental science is an interdisciplinary activity that draws on knowledge from physics, chemistry, biology, and other related disciplines. It uses modern applied mathematics and computer science to provide the language and the tools by which scientific theories are developed and verified against observations taken directly from nature itself. This talk examines the complex, delicate balances that maintain the present-day climatic state of the physical environment of planet earth and the role of modern applied mathematics in helping to better formulate and solve realistic models of the climate system. The history of earth gives evidence that dramatic changes occur in the components that make up the climate system, those components being principally the solid earth, the ice sheets, the oceans, the atmosphere, and the presence of life itself. Starting with the process of planetary formation, a survey is presented of a variety of phenomena occurring on a wide spectrum of time scales ranging from the slow drift of the continents to the rapid daily changes in our weather systems. While studying the individual components of the Earth's climate system is important, we also keep in mind that there exists interaction between components. Such interaction can control, in subtle manners, what at first would appear to be inexplicable phenomena - some notable examples being the ice ages, El Nino, and global warming. It is also noteworthy that the process of scientific investigation into these and other related phenomena has given origin to some of the most complex partial differential equations yet encountered.