This talk is part of the Heilbronn Conference.

The talk will be given by Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey.

Important information

Please note this talk is only open to UoB staff and students, no booking is required and it is free to attend.  However, if you wish to attend the whole conference you will need to register and a charge applies.  Book a place at the Heilbronn Conference.

Abstract

The study of the Earth's climate was classed by Joseph Fourier as 'one of the most important and most difficult of all of natural philosophy' and he implored fellow mathematicians to apply their skills to consider its workings. In this talk I will present a mathematical description of our climate system and describe some of the ways in which we have been using mathematical techniques to tease out a better understanding of how some of the key processes work. Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time and a critical question for predicting future climate is to understand the exchange of heat and of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the great stores of the deep ocean. I will explain in particular some of the work we have been doing applying techniques from dynamical systems research to unravel the details. This saw us going on a great adventure to the frozen waters of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica in the search for real-world unstable manifolds!