Seminar: Carlos Sierra

Limiting the increase in global average temperature well below 2 degrees Celcius above pre-industrial levels, as expressed in the Paris Agreement, implies that humanity successfully learns how to manage the global carbon cycle and Earth's energy balance. Although there is a tremendous amount of work being done in the technological, policy and scientific areas, it is not yet clear whether humanity can successfully keep the temperature of the entire planet under control. Some important scientific concepts used for policy debates make underlying assumptions of linearity or weak interactions among components of the Earth system. Therefore, it is important to re-evaluate these concepts under a more general mathematical framework that removes linearity assumptions. In this presentation I will introduce concepts from Control Theory, a field of applied mathematics, that has developed successful applications to effectively control nonlinear system. I will show that it is possible to remove linearity assumptions from current scientific concepts used in climate policy, and I will introduce new concepts that could be helpful for managing the terrestrial carbon cycle.

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In unserer wöchentlichen Vortragsreihe wechseln sich eingeladene Wissenschaftler aus internationalen Forschungsinstituten (Kolloquien) mit unseren internen Wissenschaftlern ab (interne Seminare - diese Reihe), die über die Fortschritte ihrer Forschungsprojekte berichten. Eingeladene Gäste unserer lokalen akademischen Partner sind zu den Kolloquien herzlich willkommen.