U of M receives $10M grant to study climate change

A major grant to the University of Minnesota will fund a multi-disciplinary team studying the implications of climate change in some detail.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $10 million to a team led by Vipin Kumar, head of the computer science department.

Kumar said researchers will design new analytical models, based on existing climate data, rather than existing physics-based models. He said that could pave the way to more detailed predictions.

"It's very difficult to predict using physics-based models the impact of warming oceans on the number and frequency of hurricanes, but it may be possible to see the trends by observation, by looking at the data in the past," Kumar said.

Kumar said he hopes to produce information useful to policy-makers.