Physics Club: Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “The Physics of Climate Modeling”

Event time: 
Monday, February 15, 2016 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Sloane Physics Laboratory (SPL), 59 See map
217 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT 06511
(Location is wheelchair accessible)
Event description: 

Climate is a large-scale phenomenon that emerges from complicated interactions among small-scale physical systems. Yet despite the phenomenon’s complexity, climate models have demonstrated some impressive successes. Climate projections made with sophisticated computer codes inform the world’s policymakers about the potential dangers of anthropogenic interference with Earth’s climate system, attribute historical changes to various drivers and test hypotheses for climate changes in the past. But what physics goes into the models, how are the models evaluated, and how reliable are they?