Graduate Student Seminar | Amrita Punnavajhala, Introducing coupled social-climate models

AMATH Grad Students

Candidate

Amrita Punnavajhala | University of Waterloo

Title

Introducing coupled social-climate models

Abstract

Coupled social-climate models are a class of models that, unlike most traditional models of climate change, include descriptions of human behavioural processes. Results from such models have highlighted the importance of this representation; behavioural variables have been shown to significantly alter climate change projections. In this talk I will present an overview of existing social-climate models, as well as introduce our research that uses evolutionary game theory to represent social dynamics in a coupled social-climate model. I will end with a description of our current work on a coupled social-climate model with multiple populations, studying the impacts of social heterogeneity on climate change, and vice-versa.