Special Aquarium Lecture: Sea Ice, Climate and Observational Mathematics

The New England Aquarium was pleased to welcome the Lorenz Center’s 3rd Annual John Carlson Lecture to the Simons IMAX Theatre today, Thursday, October 10. Professor John Wettlaufer spoke about sea ice, climate and observational mathematics. Thank you to everyone who joined us. The event was presented live online using Google+ Hangouts on Air. Those embedded videos are below.

Part 1



Part 2



Details
Understanding and predicting global climate change may be one of the most complex scientific challenges we face today. MIT recently launched the Lorenz Center, a new climate think tank devoted to fundamental inquiry. By emphasizing curiosity-driven research, the center fosters creative approaches to learning how climate works. To better understand this intricate system, the center seeks theories that predict observations regionally and globally, from human to geologic time scales. But what are the relevant observations? And how do we construct useful and realistic theories? This year’s lecturer, John Wettlaufer, has grappled with these questions by creating a mathematical observatory and focusing its telescopes on Arctic ice and climate. He is one of the world's leading authorities on the physics of ice and its role in climate.