The natural world

Get an overview of our research into using information network analysis to understand climate change.

Earth's climate is a complex dynamical system. Physical processes that are somewhat simple locally yield very sophisticated behaviour when observed over long time scales and across the whole planet.

This research strand attempts to shed new light on global properties of the climate system—such as average mean temperatures—by using networks of information (event) recurrences.

Physical processes are reflected in climate events that happen and combine over a wide range of time scales. This allows us to study abrupt climate change, feedback mechanisms, and the effects of coincidences.

Network properties highlight natural time scales for the coincidence of different forcings or mechanisms, which is a possible explanation for glacial terminations.