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The Quantitative Climate Science (QCS) summer school, funded by NSERC CREATE, is pleased to present the QCS Seminar Series (running from July 21-23), featuring exciting talks by invited guest speakers and QCS co-PIs. The QCS initiative is headquartered at the University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ, with co-PIs from the University of Toronto, McGill University, and Dalhousie University. More information about this initiative can be found atÌý

There is no registration for the talks. Details on each talk are listed below:

TITLE:ÌýQuantitative Climate Science: Adding Substance to a Phrase

SPEAKER:ÌýProf. Marek Stastna (University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ)

DATE/TIME:Monday, July 21, 1:15 - 2:15 pm

LOCATION:DC 1302

ABSTRACT:ÌýClimate science has undergone rapid and transformative development in recent decades. Much of this progress has been driven by advances in computation, accompanied by an expanding range of applications and increasingly sophisticated ways of communicating climate concepts. Despite the deep historical ties between climate science and applied mathematics, those connections have frayed over the very period in which the field has grown most dramatically.ÌýThis disconnect is reflected in several ways: in the shifting content of graduate curricula, in the hiring challenges faced by our partners in the civil service, and in the current ambiguity surrounding the role of AI within the broader climate enterprise.ÌýIn this talk, I will present three examples of mathematical concepts that surface across different subfields of climate science. These will serve as entry points to explore both the opportunities and the obstacles — conceptual, notational, and practical — that arise when trying to bridge the gap between mathematical and climate science communities. I will make the case for a broader understanding of what constitutes "climate-related" research and argue for a thoughtful reassessment of the training we offer today's students, especially in light of what previous generations (my own included) were taught.

TITLE:ÌýEnvisioning Future Technologies for Numerical Weather Prediction

SPEAKER:ÌýDr. Carlos Pereira Frontado (Environment and Climate Change Canada)

DATE/TIME:Monday, July 21, 2:45 - 3:45 pm

LOCATION:ÌýDC 1302

ABSTRACT:Weather forecasting is undergoing a revolutionary transformation. At Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), the Global Environmental Multiscale Model (GEM) has powered operational forecasts for the past few decades, but today's advances in artificial intelligence are fundamentally reshaping how we predict the atmosphere. As we begin this revolution, a natural path forward is to blend new data-driven insights with more established numerical methods for solving partial differential equations. At ECCC, breakthrough innovations like spectral nudging marry AI with classical numerics to boost accuracy, while we are simultaneously developing novel numerical schemes and a physics-informed AI framework, PARADIS, to push low-cost predictive skill even further. In this talk, we will present our hybrid forecasting vision, showcasing our work on high-order accurate numerical techniques and AI to deliver faster, more reliable weather forecasts that could help to save lives and protect our economy.

TITLE:ÌýFusing data for improved sea ice concentration estimates

SPEAKER:Prof. Andrea Scott (University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ)

DATE/TIME:Tuesday, July 22, 1:15 - 2:15 pm

LOCATION:MC 5501

ABSTRACT:Passive microwave sensors are a valuable tool for monitoring sea ice concentration in the Arctic. However, data from these sensors are known to have biases for thin ice, can be inaccurate when there is significant atmospheric moisture and have a high uncertainty in the marginal ice zone. Fusing passive microwave data with other sources of data can lead to improved results. In this talk we will discuss different data types and data fusion strategies as well as ways to quantify the uncertainty in the fused results. The focus will be on demonstrating the effectiveness of these tools for monitoring the marginal ice zone.

TITLE:ÌýMicroscale Urban Climate Modeling — pairing numerical modeling with the real world to promote healthy urban environments

SPEAKER:Prof. Peter Crank (University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ)

DATE/TIME:Tuesday, July 22, 2:45 - 3:45 pm

LOCATION:MC 5501

ABSTRACT:Under climate change and growing urban populations, urban climatology is a growing field with many touchpoints with individuals, society, and the environment. Microscale numerical modeling provides researchers with unique tools to explore various urban design scenarios and their impact on the microclimate as well as on human health. Dr. Crank will explore how these models are used, evaluated, and validated through examples in hot climates like Phoenix and Singapore. He will also touch on how these models can be leveraged to support decision-making for healthy urban environments in hot climates but also in the Canadian context.

TITLE:ÌýHigh-resolution models of the nearshore ocean and their applications

SPEAKER:Dr. Laura Bianucci (Fisheries and Oceans Canada)

DATE/TIME:Wednesday, July 23, 1:15 - 2:15 pm

LOCATION:MC 5501

ABSTRACT:The coastal ocean is a dynamic, complex region where multi-scale processes interact and create conditions suitable for rich ecosystems. For instance, the combination of processes such as land and river runoff, local and remotely-forced upwelling, and wind and tidal mixing can bring nutrients to the surface waters, triggering high primary productivity rates. These coastal waters are also subjected to the direct impact of human activities like fishing, aquaculture farming, wastewater runoff, etc. These anthropogenic perturbations along with other pressures exerted by climate change can lead to negative effects in the coastal ocean (e.g., pollution, hypoxia, ocean acidification, sea level rise, etc.), which in turn can negatively affect ocean-dependent human activities. Since global and regional ocean models usually lack the necessary spatial resolution to fully represent many nearshore processes, there is a need for high-resolution coastal models to address some of these issues near shore. These coastal models can be used to understand the physical and biogeochemical drivers in different regions, how these processes can change in the future, and what the implications of these changes are. Furthermore, they can be useful tools to help inform the decision-making process of managers, regulators and the private sector alike. In this presentation, I will share some examples of high-resolution nearshore models developed at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and their applications. Furthermore, I will take the opportunity to share my experience working as a scientist for the government of Canada.

TITLE:ÌýMarine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR): The good, the bad, and the ugly

SPEAKER:Prof. Katja Fennel (Dalhousie University)

DATE/TIME:ÌýWednesday, July 23, 2:45 - 3:45 pm

LOCATION:MC 5501

ABSTRACT:Approaches for a deliberate removal of CO₂from the atmosphere by manipulating the ocean's chemistry or ecosystems (also referred to as "marine Carbon Dioxide Removal" or mCDR) are rapidly gaining attention. None of the proposed approaches are currently technologically mature enough for deployment and significant research efforts are required. In this presentation, I will share general background and some personal thoughts about this rapidly developing field before diving into currently ongoing work on ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) in Halifax Harbour. OAE, the deliberate increase of ocean alkalinity, is an emerging technology that is considered comparatively scalable and promises to deliver durable carbon removal. A major challenge to the successful implementation of OAE (and any other mCDR technology) is the difficulty in reliably quantifying how much CO₂Ìýis being removed from the atmosphere and for how long. Observations are inherently sparse and therefore they alone cannot provide a comprehensive quantification of the effects of OAE. Numerical models are important complementary tools that can help guide fieldwork design, provide forecasts of the ocean state, and simulate the effects of alkalinity additions on the seawater carbonate system. I will describe a coupled circulation-biogeochemical model in a nested grid configuration that reaches a very high spatial resolution in Bedford Basin and model applications in support of OAE field work.