On Monday, 10/28, Professor Richard McGehee from the University of Minnesota will be giving a seminar talk entitled “Earth’s Heat Imbalance,” on math modeling for climate change. An abstract for the talk can be found at the end of this post. The talk will start at 3:30 pm in Olin 321 with refreshments beginning at 3:15.
The Earth’s weather and climate are driven by energy from the Sun. There is a large amount of energy coming continuously from the Sun in the form of visible light and an equal amount of energy leaving the Earth in the form of long wave radiation. Slight differences between the incoming and outgoing energy drive changes in the Earth’s climate. With satellites and ocean instruments, it is possible to estimate the current heat imbalance and to construct simple mathematical models describing the phenomena.