Back to Departmental Colloquium: Spring 2022
Departmental Colloquium
Date: Thursday, Jan 13, 2022
Time: 4:00PM
Location: JWB 335
Alice Nadeau
Cornell University
Title |
Mathematical Challenges in Modeling Exoplanet Climates |
Abstract |
In recent years over 4500 planets have been discovered outside of our solar system. These planets range from small rocky planets that harbor liquid water like Earth to gas giants like Jupiter as hot as 7000 degrees Fahrenheit. However, only limited data can be collected for each planet and dynamical models are needed to understand what these distant worlds might be like. Luckily, mathematicians have been modeling Earth’s climate for at least 200 years and it is possible to adapt these Earth models to learn about our distant neighbors. Surprisingly, adaptations that we make to Earth models to understand exoplanet climates can help resolve long-standing debates about the Earth models themselves. In this talk I’ll focus on the basic tools and intuition needed to model exoplanet climate and highlight my recent work on the likelihood of exoplanets with partial ice cover. The results of this work have the ancillary benefit of addressing the issue of the small ice cap instability for Earth. I’ll conclude with prospects for exoplanet modeling in the advent of the next generation of space telescopes. |
Dynamical Systems
Mathematical Biology