The Climate Multiscale Challenge From the Lens of the Ocean

The grand challenge posed by climate change is rooted in the climate system’s multiscale character and high dimensionality. In other words, solving climate change involves accounting for the many degrees of freedom that are coupled to each other and intrinsically nonlinear, including factors in the physical, biological and chemical realms.

In this Presidential Lecture, Annalisa Bracco will discuss this challenge, focusing on the oceans and the contribution of ‘submesoscale turbulence’ (turbulence at scales of 0.1–10 km). She will discuss the multiscale nature of the climate system in general — and of the ocean in more detail — in the context of technological solutions for carbon dioxide removal currently being proposed and explored.

Bracco is a professor and associate chair for research at Georgia Tech with an extensive background in computational fluid dynamics, physical oceanography and climate dynamics. In 2011, she received the American Meteorological Society’s Nicholas P. Fofonoff Award for her contributions to understanding the coupling of ocean dynamics with marine ecosystems. Her research interests include using models and observations to study ocean transport, climate dynamics and carbon cycling in the climate system.