Climate modelling and projected future climate change in Africa

Global Change Institute will host a lunch time talk with Professor Francois Engelbrecht.

Unprecedented heat-waves and mega-fires have characterised the Northern Hemisphere summer in 2018, and are thought by many to be the tell-tale signs of climate change. Climate models are the main tools used to objectively determine whether such events can be attributed to anthropogenic-induced climate change, and also to obtain projections of future global climate change.

Climate models are routed in the laws of physics, which when applied to the atmosphere and ocean result in a complex set of partial differential equations that can be solved numerically using high-performance computers. Developing and applying climate models thus yields a fascinating and intricate science that requires a multi-disciplinary research effort, involving numerical mathematics, high-performance computing, atmospheric chemistry and physics, oceanography, climatology and ecosystem dynamics.

This talk will provide a brief overview of the development of the first African-based climate model at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa. Moreover, the most detailed projections of future climate change obtained to date for South Africa, using the supercomputer of the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), will be presented.

Add event to calendar