Public Online Colloquium #40: Prof. Jürgen Kurths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw-vBJp_xG0

In the 40th event of KHAS Public Colloquium series, our guest will be Prof. Jürgen Kurths from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research & Humboldt University Department of Physics.

Abstract: : The Earth system is a very complex and dynamic one based on various feedbacks. This makes a challenging task for predictions and risk analysis even of very strong (sometimes extreme) events such as floods, landslides, heat waves, earthquakes, etc. After introducing physical models for the weather forecast in 1922 by L.F. Richardson, a fundamental open problem has been understanding basic physical mechanisms and exploring anthropogenic influences on climate. In 2021 Hasselmann and Manabe received the Physics Nobel Prize for their pioneering works. I will shortly review their main seminal contributions. Next, I will introduce a recently developed approach via complex networks to analyze important climate events. This leads to an inverse problem: Is there a backbone-like structure underlying the climate system? We have proposed a method to reconstruct and analyze a complex network from data to treat this problem. This approach enables us to uncover relations to global and regional circulation patterns in oceans and atmosphere, which leads to constructing substantially better predictions, in particular for the onset of the Indian Summer Monsoon, extreme rainfall in South America, and tropical cyclones but also to understand the phase transition in the past climate. 

“Climate Meets Complexity: Exploring Predictability of Extreme Climate Events via a Complex Network Approach”

Prof. Jürgen Kurths

December 8, 2021, Wednesday at 16:00

Zoom Meeting ID: 821 4564 7850

Live on KHAS YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/hw-vBJp_xG0