icon

Plus Advent Calendar Door #3: How to predict our changing climate

Share this page
Emily Shuckburgh and Chris Budd

Emily Shuckburgh and Chris Budd.

How do you go about predicting something as complex as the Earth's climate? In this podcast — featuring climate modelling experts Emily Shuckburgh and Chris Budd — we explore what those climate models look like, the uncertainties involved in climate modelling, and also why the predictions need to be taken seriously despite those uncertainties.

We also look at the simplest climate model of them all— the energy balance model — and explain the famous butterfly effect in just one minute.

Listen to the podcast!

Emily Shuckburgh is a mathematician and climate scientist and Director of Cambridge Zero. Chris Budd OBE is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, who works on climate models. You can read Budd's Plus article about climate modelling here.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking the download link, and you can subscribe to our podcast feed in your podcast aggregator of choice, or directly through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Return to the Plus advent calendar 2021.


The podcast features clips from Emily Shuckburgh's talk at the Cambridge Festival, which was hosted by the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge. You can watch the full talk here.

This podcast is part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. INI attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit www.newton.ac.uk to find out more.

INI logo

Read more about...
  • Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.

  • As COP28, the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, kicks off we look at how maths can help understand the climate crisis.

  • How do you create dramatic film out of mathematics? We find out with writer and director Timothy Lanzone.

  • Mathematics plays a central role in understanding how infectious diseases spread. This collection of articles looks at some basic concepts in epidemiology to help you understand this fascinating and important field, and set you up for further study.

  • Find out why the formula we use to work out conditional probabilities is true!

  • We talk about a play that explores the fascinating mathematical collaboration between the mathematicians GH Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan.