We’re in the year 2019.

Wildfires in the Lungs of the World’, California and Washington in the US, Alberta Canada,
Bandipur India, Da Nang Vietnam, Goseong South Korea, Queensland Australia, Nelson
New Zealand made the World Headlines. Northern and Western Europe was suffering a
similar fate with fires burning through large swathes of Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Norway,
Latvia, Ireland and most devastatingly in Greece.
Like America and Australia, Europe and Asia was also in the grips of a brutal heat wave with
the temperatures reaching close 120 F as well as suffering a prolonged drought.
As the early reports of 2019 read that the drought and heat waves hit the Indian states of
Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, parts of the North-East,
Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. These states are home to 500 million people, almost
40% of the country’s population. The West and parts of the Plains, Northeast and southern
Florida, parts of Puerto Rico, and much of Hawaii suffered from extreme drought. The
Eastern parts of China suffered a severe drought too.
More than 52 million in 18 countries across Africa including Angola, Botswana, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique,
Namibia, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe
experienced up to crisis levels of starvation due to weather extremes.
South Africa facing worst drought in 1000 years! Parts of Thailand, Mexico and Chile also
faced the worst droughts in more than five decades!
While Contrary to the droughts the World also witnessed extreme floods.
Northern parts of Iran, Midwestern Southern and South-eastern U.S., Guatemala, El
Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, Large Parts of Africa and Europe suffered severe floods.
India made a global headline as the country faced the extreme floods that affected over
thirteen states. Karnataka and Maharashtra were the most severely affected states. It was the
heaviest monsoon in last 25 years. Saudi Arabia, Large parts of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Eastern
States of Malaysia, The Philippines, Indonesia, and even Japan faced extreme floods
affecting thousands of lives.
Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event over the South Pole, Melting of Ice in the
Antarctica and Arctic, The global sea level rise! Global mean sea level has risen about 8–9
inches (21–24 centimeters) since 1880, with about a third of that coming in just the last two
and a half decades. The rising water level is mostly due to a combination of meltwater from
glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of seawater as it warms. In 2018, global mean
sea level was 3.2 inches (8.1 centimeters) above the 1993 average. And hence, the sea level
rises by 3mm every year and it’s alarming!
2019 also witnessed catastrophic disasters which displaced thousands with likes of Hurricane
Dorian, Humberto, Pablo. Typhoon Hagibis, Kammuri and Faxai!
This is a series of striking events happening, the droughts, the heatwaves, the fires, the floods,
the hurricanes, and the typhoons. None of those are in and of themselves are unique!

“You will not solve global climate change by hitting the delete button. Climate change is the
Everest of all problems, the thorniest challenge facing humankind."

I’m not here to share the idea of what causes climate change, and well by now everyone
should be aware of it, if not then you’re too late!

What we can conclude about the above events with a great deal of confidence now is that
Climate Change is making these events more extreme.
And it’s not rocket science, you warm up the atmosphere, you get more rainfall, larger
flooding events.
You warm the planet; you’re going to get more frequent and intense heat waves.
You warm the soils, you dry them out, you get worst drought. You bring all that together, and
those are all the ingredients for unprecedented wildfires.
Now, beyond that, there's something else that we think is happening. And that's why there is
this coherence, that all of these events around the both Hemispheres, extreme floods,
droughts, heat waves, wildfires, what connects them is the fact that these weather systems are
remaining in place, they're remaining stationary.
We have these large undulations in the jet stream. And that gives us extreme weather. But
what's also happening is that the jet stream isn't moving them along. We have a slow jet
stream.
And so, these weather systems stay in the same place day after day. They rain on the same
locations’ day after day. That's when you get unprecedented flooding. They bake the ground
day after day. That's when you get unprecedented heat and drought.
And we think that climate change is actually creating those conditions. Climate change is
literally making the jet stream wilder. It undulates more, so you get those weather extremes,
and it's causing the jet stream to slow down, so those extreme weather events stick around.
And that's when you get unprecedented damage and threat.

Now being a student studying in the field of mathematics overs the years, here’s few of my
ideas how math can save the world!
So can numbers, algebra and trigonometry save the planet?
From meteorology to economics, a wealth of scientific research will be necessary to improve
our understanding of climate change, its impacts and what we can do to prepare for them.
Scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find mathematicians doing their bit to save the planet
in a multitude of ways:

1. Designing better weather forecasts and climate models

The biggest problem is to bridge the gap between simple and complex mathematical models!
Accurate weather forecasts predict when and where extreme weather may strike, whilst
climate projections are key to identifying weather patterns changing on a longer time scale.
Our ability to predict weather and climate has advanced in leaps and bounds in the last few
decades, thanks to maths. Modern weather forecasts rely on computers to solve the complex
equations that simulate the atmosphere’s behaviour – from global processes that influence the
flow of the jet stream down to local rain clouds.
Mathematicians play an important role in this process, working with a set of equations that
describe the atmosphere, taking into account temperature, pressure and humidity. Global
Circulation Models (GCMs) describe the interactions between oceans and atmosphere to look
at what the average conditions could be in decades to come.

2. Developing new technologies

New technologies are key to a low carbon future. Carbon capture and storage (CCS), for
instance, could safely lock away greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuel-fired power stations,
and is likely to play a key role in averting dangerous levels of global warming
If I think it mathematically, I start with the number of People (P), each of us is using Services
(S) that require energy (like heating, air conditioning or transport), and so we have how much
energy each of this services use, and then we have how much carbon comes out for each unit
of energy, and so once multiply altogether that’s when you get 36 billion tonnes of CO2
being emitted. To make that to come out that number to be about zero, we need to change the
four factors.
Population, which is still going to increase! Country like India which will become the most
populated country in the world by 2022 have certainly no population control measures, and
hence you cannot reduce this factor. 9 billion by the end of this century!
On Services per person, the rich countries can use it less, but places like India and Africa who
still don’t have air conditioning and refrigeration, we actually want this number to go up! We
want people to have modern lifestyles and so the total services would increase.
Now the next factor, Energy used per Service, their innovation is going to help, we will get
this down but only about a factor of 2 or so.
And so that leaves our final factor CO2 per unit of energy, that’s where we need to do
something super dramatic, we need to use sources of energy that emit no CO2.
To get from 36 billion tons over here down to a very very small number and avoid
catastrophic climate Change!

3. Getting ‘bang for buck’ out of supercomputers & Making sense of ‘big data’

The computers used to model weather and climate get more powerful every year – but sheer
processing power isn’t everything. Maths makes these computers far more effective both
through contributing to technological improvements in areas like quantum computing, and by
rethinking the algorithms used in computer programs. For instance, new research allows the
computer to automatically zoom its attention in on areas where the weather is particularly
interesting, such as around storms.
Optimising computers’ performance can also reduce their energy demand. For example, the
Met Office’s Cray supercomputer runs on 2.7 MW of electricity, so even modest efficiency
gains could have a massive impact on its overall energy consumption.

Collecting billions of pieces of data in environments, from ice sheets to cities, can deliver
precious insights into our planet’s physical processes, human behaviour and everything in
between. Climate scientists rebuild the history of our planet’s atmospheric composition by
analysing the tiny bubbles trapped in ice records, in order to anticipate the scope of future
changes. But without the statistical methods that mathematicians bring to analyse this data
and assess its reliability, the information has less value.
1. To Reach the Gap between Science and Policy decisions!

2. Understanding the concept of Tipping points within all mathematical framework

3. Importance of model hierarchies for addressing questions of climate or sustainability.

4. Making the most of renewable energy sources

Renewable energy sources lie at the heart of a low-carbon world. By choosing optimal
locations for wind or solar farms and designing the most effective layouts for tidal and wind
turbine arrays, mathematicians ensure that these technologies harvest the maximum energy as
efficiently as possible.

Mathematicians contribute to research into energy supply and demand that ensures networks
incorporate higher proportions of weather-dependent energy sources such as wind or solar
power, making sure that the lights stay on in years to come.
5. Preparing for change
The effects of climate change will be felt on many levels, and knowledge is key to
safeguarding human health and livelihoods as we adapt to changing circumstances.
Mathematicians use their understanding of probability and uncertainty to advise policymakers
on the likelihood of heatwaves, floods or other changes in weather patterns, and help them to
plan accordingly.
Businesses also need detailed information on how climate change might affect them. The
food industry for example is highly dependent on agriculture and could use advance warning
of an upcoming drought for instance to prepare themselves for smaller yields.
Mathematicians try to predict who might be at risk so they can prepare for the future.
Moreover, mathematical simulations are a valuable tool for estimating the possible
consequences of specific actions, by playing out different scenarios. This too can help
policymakers choose one course of action over others. By presenting the hard numbers,
mathematicians with an environmental conscience can seek to influence the ways businesses
operate.

6. Making maths accessible to everyone

Crucially, maths can’t save the planet on its own. Many of the global challenges we face are
multi-disciplinary. With their firm grasp of concepts such uncertainty and probability, We are
uniquely placed to communicate the science, data and forecasts, and ensure that this
information is meaningful to the people who need it.

Most important Climatologist James Hansen and his team at NASA do a study to figure out
how much Carbon in the atmosphere is too much!
The paper they published maybe the most important scientific paper of the millennial said
that we know enough to know how much was too much and stated that even a value of
carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 ppm is not compatible with the planet “On which
civilization developed & to which life on earth is adapted”
Strong still if you know the outside today the atmosphere is 407 ppm of CO2 and rising about
2 ppm of CO2 per year.

Everything frozen on earth is melting, the great ice-sheet of the Arctic is reduced by more
than half, the oceans are about 30 % more acidic than they were 30 years ago. Because the
chemistry of seawater changes as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere.
And because warm air holds more water vapour than the cold, the atmosphere is about 5%
wetter than it was 40 years ago. That’s astonishingly large change.
“There’s more energy coming in and been absorbed by the earth than there is heat been
radiated to the space, which is exactly what we expected, as we add greenhouse gases to the
atmosphere, it traps heat and now we can measure that! And that’s the basis by which we can
prove that human made impacts on the atmospheric composition are the primary cause of the
climate change that we are observing.

The numbers game which everyone should aware of:

There are three and they are easy.
The first one is 2C, that’s how much the world is said it is safe to let the planet be warm.
How much carbon we can pour into the atmosphere and have a reasonable chance of staying
below two degrees.
It’s 565 Gigatons of CO2, a Gigaton is a billion ton, sounds like it’s a lot, it’s actually a lot!
The problem is we pour 30 billion tons a year, and now it’s 3% up a year, do the math and the
threshold stands at 15 years before we go past that threshold.
But the scary number is the 3rd number, and it came from the team of financial analyst in UK
and it figured out How much carbon the world’s fossil fuel industry had in their reserves, and
that number turned out to be 2795 Gigatons worth of carbon.
5th times as much as the most conservative government on earth think would be safe to pour
into the atmosphere. It’s not even close it’s 5 times more, Once you understand these
numbers, you will understand the essence of this problem.
“It was the best of times; It was the worst of times. One of the most iconic quotes of English
literature.
Not a tale of two cities but a tale of two planets. Earth and Venus are essentially the same
size, essentially the same distance from the sun and both have exactly the same amount of
carbon.”
Difference, that over time on earth the carbon has been!