PhD Comprehensive Exam | Amrita Punnavajhala, Introducing heterogeneity into coupled socio-climate models

MS Teams (please email amgrad@uwaterloo.ca for the meeting link)

Candidate

Amrita Punnavajhala | Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo

Title

Introducing heterogeneity into coupled socio-climate models

Abstract

Climate change, as we see it today, is attributed to anthropogenic carbon emissions. Human socio-economic activities that drive these emissions have been well-studied, however the underlying social dynamics, governed by forces of human psychology and sociology, have typically not been included in mathematical models of climate change. Socio-climate models are constructed with the aim of addressing this deficiency. My overall research objective is to study the impacts of including heterogenous human behaviour in socio-climate models. In preliminary work, we build on an existing socio-climate model by introducing country-level structure. Our results so far provide insights into the relative efficacies of social and economic interventions to encourage mitigation, for different groupings of countries. Future work will involve modelling mitigation at multiple scales and representing heterogeneous social learning processes in socio-climate models.