(gentle music)
- [Gabriel] The atmosphere,
the ocean,
land,
and ice.
These elements of the climate system
are governed by physics, biology, chemistry,
and climate models let us understand
the regional and global patterns
of climate change.
(gentle music continues)
- I'm drawn to the ocean because it's vast,
mysterious,
like an uncharted realm.
Within the university,
I collaborate with professors that work on paleo climate,
so looking in the past.
I work also with some faculty
in mechanical and aerospace engineering
and environmental engineering.
- So this is, at the one degree,
a one degree cell.
I've been working with Professor Resplandy
to better understand how the atmosphere and ocean
connect to each other,
and how ocean changes
can impact atmospheric phenomena,
like tropical cyclones or rainfall.
(strong winds blowing)
- The ocean is a buffer for climate change
because it takes about 30% of carbon dioxide
that human emits to the atmosphere,
and it also takes up about 90% of the heat.
The flip coin to that
is that the ocean is influenced by those changes,
so the ocean is losing oxygen with warming.
There are places called coastal dead zones,
areas with very low oxygen levels,
usually caused by warming,
but also reinforced by local human pollution.
In extreme cases,
they can lead to massive fish kill,
where you're gonna have a lot of organisms that just die.
Climate models use mathematical equations
that represents the earth system,
to understand what happened in the past
and assess how it's gonna evolve.
- They produce large amounts of data,
run on super computers,
the world's largest computers.
And they allow us to ask what-if questions
about our planet, such as,
what if we continue to let greenhouse gases
increase, unabated, into the coming century?
Or what if we reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?
What does that mean for the oceans,
the atmosphere, land, and ice?
- With warming,
we expect all these transports of moisture to amplify,
because-
- We've been working for months to develop
an Indian Ocean model.
That's where we expect the largest cities to be in 50 years,
and so that's where we expect, also,
to see a lot more of those coastal dead zones in the future.
So here, we're looking at the Indian Ocean,
and we're looking at oxygen.
White, a lot of oxygen,
blue, not a lot of oxygen.
So blue means most organisms, like fish,
are not able to survive.
It's too low in oxygen for them to breathe.
Now what you see, is that-
- [Gabriel] With this information about dead zones
in the North Indian Ocean,
we can try to understand
how to better manage our interactions with the ocean,
how to develop fishery strategies,
and how to better manage fertilizer use over land,
and its runoff into the oceans.
(audience applauds)
- [Presenter] Nobel Laureates,
Professor Manabe.
- [Gabriel] Suki Manabe developed
the very first climate model in the world,
at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
And since then,
there has been an uninterrupted exchange of ideas
and development on climate modeling
between Princeton and its partners at the GFDL.
- Because I have that strong collaboration
with the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab,
and I have a lot of support from the university,
makes it one of the best place in the world
to
do what I do.
(gentle music)
- For decades,
climate models have been indicating to us
a number of very serious challenges for society.
Extreme temperature and rainfall,
changes to the biology and chemistry of the ocean.
I remain optimistic by thinking of the various challenges
that humanity has overcome,
and also by looking at our students
here at Princeton University.
(soothing music)
(birds chirping)
- ...Simulation is that you transport moisture
towards the equator.
- [Gabriel] Their commitment
to learning about these problems
and trying to identify workable solutions.
(soothing music)
- In research, in science,
we have so much progress that has been done.
That really makes me hopeful
that we can change the trajectory in the future.
(gentle music)