A Joint Initiative of the North American Mathematical Institutions: Climate Change, Sustainability and the Mathematical Sciences

Fourteen mathematical institutions throughout North America have joined together to address the issues of climate change and sustainability. This website will highlight the work happening at the various institutions regarding climate change and sustainability.

2010 Joint Mathematics Meeting

The 2010 Joint Mathematics Meeting will be held January 13 - 16, 2010 in San Francisco. Nearly 6,000 people attended the meeting in 2009, and 2010 promises to be even bigger. During this year's Joint Meeting, an event representing a research initiative among North American mathematical institutions will focus on climate change and sustainability.

The controversy over the private e-mails that were hacked at a British university last month sparked the question that some scientists may have overstated their case or not reported the numbers correctly. It is more important than ever that the mathematicians take a lead role in collecting and properly interpreting the data.

Media Advisory

Press Release

Math Institutes Open House reception, Wednesday, January 13, 2010 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
A presentation about the climate change and sustainability activities happening at the institutes will be featured. Representatives of the sponsoring institutes will be on hand to share information about some of their exciting upcoming plans for their mathematics programs. Please join us at this event to hear more about what the various mathematical institutions are doing to address these critical issues.

Schedule for the Open House

Open House Presentations: 6:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Robert Bryant
MSRI Director		 Welcome, Introduction of Theme, and Master of Ceremonies
Marty Golubitsky
MBI Director		 Introduction of Sponsoring Institutes
A Short Discussion of Why we have Institutes
Mary Lou Zeeman
R. Wells Johnson
Professor of Mathematics, Bowdoin College		 Mathematical Challenges in Climate Science and Sustainability
Christiane Rousseau
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Montréal		 Mathematics of Planet Earth
Peter March
Director, Division of Mathematical Sciences, NSF		 Towards a Science of Sustainability

Calendar of Events

2010
January Lectures on Energy Markets including Carbon Emission Markets IPAM
January Mathematics in Pandemic Influenza Management MITACS
January Working Group: Feral swine/pseudo-rabies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park NIMBioS
January Workshop on Climate and Health DIMACS
2010-2011 Climate and Health Research Initiative: Extreme Events DIMACS
Jan.-Aug Program on Space-Time Analysis for Environmental Mapping, Epidemiology and Climate Change (including research groups on: Paleoclimate; Spatial exposures and health effects; Interaction of deterministic and stochastic models; Computation, visualization, and dimension reduction in spatio-temporal modelling,; Spatial extremes; and Geostatistics) SAMSI
Spring Course on Spatial Statistics in Climate, Ecology and Atmospherics SAMSI
February Modular Course on Geoenvironmental Modelling MITACS
February Workshop on Climate Change SAMSI
February Working group: Synthesizing predictive modelling of forest insect dynamics across spatial and temporal scales NIMBioS
March Biofilms and Infectious Disease MBI
March NICDS workshop: Statistical Methods for Geographic and Spatial Data in the Management of Natural Resources CRM
March-June Model and Data Hierarchies for Simulating and Understanding Climate IPAM
April Transport and Mixing in Complex and Turbulent flows IMA
April Workshop on Environmental Risk SAMSI
April Workshop on Modelling River Ecosystems at Ottawa Fields
May Workshop on Life History Analysis at Waterloo Fields
May Mathematical Modelling Symposium and Workshop at the 2010 International Conference on Sea Lice MITACS
Spring-Summer Working group: Synthesizing and Predicting Infectious Disease while Accounting for Endogenous Risk NIMBioS
June Waves in Fluids from the Microscopic to the Planetary Scale PIMS
June New Directions Short Course: New Mathematical Models in Economics and Finance IMA
July Investigative Workshop: Modelling sustainability of coral reef ecosystem services under multiple interacting stressors NIMBioS
July Summer School on Climate Change MSRI
July-August Mathematics of Drug resistance in Infectious diseases Fields
July-August US-African Initiative: Advanced Study Institute and Workshop on Conservation Biology (Kenya Wildlife Services Camp, Naivasha, Kenya) DIMACS/MBI
August Summer School on Computer Models and Geophysical Risk Analysis PIMS
August Workshop on Virology Fields
August Extreme Events in Climate and Weather - An Interdisciplinary Workshop BIRS
September Mathematical Modelling of Plant Development MBI
September Decision Analysis and Sustainable Development CRM
Fall Collaborative Research Groups: Environmetrics PIMS
Fall Collaborative Research Groups: Climate modelling PIMS
December Waves and Multiscale Processes in the Tropics AIM
MITACS: Shorter-term Research Projects (2010) Exploration of novel fuels for gas turbine applications Simultaneous water and energy network optimization in the Canadian pulp and paper industry
2011
January Statistical methods for meteorology and climate change CRM
January Sustainability Problems workshop AIM
2011 Climate and Health Research Initiative: Extreme Events DIMACS
February Ecology and Control of Invasive Species, Including Insects MBI
March-June Navigating Chemical Compound Space for Materials and Bio Design IPAM
April Coevolution and the Ecological Structure of Plant-Insect Communities MBI
April Societally Relevant Computing IMA
May Statistical issues in forest management CRM
May Organized Tropical Convection and Large-scale Circulation: Theory, Modeling, and Observations BIRS
May-June Ocean Ecologies and their Physical Habitats in a Changing Climate MBI
June Data Assimilation and Inverse Problems IMA
July Emerging Challenges at the Interface of Mathematics, Environmental Science and spatial Eco BIRS
July Advanced Mathematical Methods to Study Atmospheric Dynamical Processes and Predictability BIRS
Summer Complex Fluids in Industry and Nature MITACS
Summer Mathematical Challenges from Spatial Ecology: Environmental Variability MITACS
Summer Numerical Methods for Incompressible Flows MITACS
Aug.-July '12 Program on Uncertainty Quantification, with subthemes of climate change, modelling of risk in geosciences, and renewable energy SAMSI
Sept/Oct Balance, boundaries and mixing in the climate problem CRM
Fall Computational challenges for fusion energy IPAM
MITACS: Ongoing Long-term Research Projects
  • Transmission dynamics and spatial spread of infectious diseases: Modelling, prediction and control
  • Multi-scale adaptive modelling and numerical methods for reactive flows
  • Forest fires and spread in heterogeneous landscapes
  • Simulating climate processes with high-resolution regional climate model
  • Advanced mathematical modelling and simulation of transport phenomena
  • Network for biological invasions and dispersal research
  • Novel methods for three-dimensional aerodynamic optimization
  • Predictive modelling of coastal habitat distribution
  • Mesoscale hydrological ensemble forecasting for water resources management
  • Modelling atmospheric boundary-layer flow for wind energy and other applications
  • Optimizing multimodal transport in the forestry sector
  • Advanced finite element techniques for coupled magnetic and thermal problems in superconductors
  • Multi-format environmental information
  • Multi-criteria mission route planning for search, surveillance and rescue in hazardous environments

Images for climate change/sustainability stories

CRM Workshop on Balance, boundaries and mixing in the climate problem, September or October 2011 to be organized by P. Bartello (McGill), S. Smith (Courant Institute), D. Straub (McGill)

Captions: Videos (Courtesy of P. Bartello)

Mixing of a passive tracer (e.g. dye or smoke) by a field of vortices on a hypothetical planet that is not rotating. The initial tracer field varied smoothly from red at the top to blue at the bottom (as in the colour bar at right).

As above, but on a planet with very rapid rotation, such as Jupiter. Note that the effect of rotation is to increase the mixing in the east-west direction, but to decrease it in the north-south direction.

Flow in a channel on a moderately rotating planet.

Caption: Stills (Courtesy P. Bartello)

A numerical simulation of large-scale slowly-varying vortices that have spontaneously given rise to very intense small-scale activity (slightly above the centre of the frame). The latter is thought to reduce meteorological predictability and may lead to localised extreme events.

Mixing of a passive tracer (e.g. dye or smoke) by a field of vortices on a hypothetical planet that is not rotating. The initial tracer field varied smoothly from red at the top to blue at the bottom (as in the colour bar at right).

As above, but on a planet with very rapid rotation, such as Jupiter. Note that the effect of rotation is to increase the mixing in the east-west direction, but to decrease it in the north-south direction.

A field of interacting vortices in two-dimensional flow that is running down under the influence of viscosity (friction). Two-dimensional flow is used as a first approximation for atmospheric and oceanic vortices whose height is only of the order of 10 km, but whose width can be hundreds to thousands of kilometres.

A satellite photo of atmospheric vortices as delineated by their cloud fields.



AIM Workshop on Wave and Multiscale Processes in the Tropics, December, 2010. This graphic is courtesy of G. Kiladis

Caption: A longitude/time (increasing downward) plot of north/south averaged precipitation (as determined from cloud top temperature) around the equator in June 2002. The Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) wave is clearly seen starting around June 2nd near 55 degrees East (the western Indian Ocean), traveling eastward until it ends in the central Pacific Ocean about three weeks later. Embedded westward moving features hint at the multiple scales which are active in the MJO.


CONTACTS FOR MATHEMATICS INSTITUTES:

AIM (American Institute of Mathematics)
Palo Alto, California
Estelle Basor, Deputy Director
ebasor@aimath.org
(650)845-2071

BIRS (Banff International Research Station)
Banff, Alberta, Canada
Nassif Ghoussoub, Director
nassif@math.ubc.ca
(604)822-1649

CRM (Centre de Recherches Mathétiques)
Montré, Quebec, Canada
Christiane Rousseau, Professor
rousseac@dms.umontreal.ca
(514)343-7729

DIMACS (Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science)
Piscataway, New Jersey
Linda Casals, Publicity Coordinator
lindac@dimacs.rutgers.edu
(732)445-4573

Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Emily Baillie, Communications Officer
ebaillie@fields.utoronto.ca
(416)348-9710 x3024

IMA (Institute for Mathematics and its Applications)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Alice Tibbetts, Exernal Relations and Assessment
tibbetts@ima.umn.edu
(612)625-3889

IPAM (Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics)
Los Angeles, California
Russ Caflisch, Director
rcaflisch@ipam.ucla.edu
(310)983-3297

MBI (Mathematical Biosciences Institute)
Columbus, Ohio
Marty Golubitsky, Director
mg@mbi.osu.edu
(614)247-4758

MITACS Inc. (Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Megan Airton-Cindric, Director, Communications
mairton@mitacs.ca
(604)822-3982

MSRI (Mathematical Sciences Research Institute)
Berkeley, California
Anne Brooks Pfister, Press Officer
annepf@msri.org
(510)642-0448

NIMBioS (National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis)
Knoxville, Tennessee
Catherine Crawley, Ph.D., Communications Coordinator
ccrawley@nimbios.org
(865)974-9350

PIMS (Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences)
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Adam Wojtowicz, Media and Graphics Coordinator
adam@pims.math.ca
(604)822-0402

SAMSI (Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute)
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
Jamie Nunnelly, Communications Director
nunnelly@niss.org
(919)685-9319