Issues in the Theoretical Foundations of Climate Science: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives Workshop

Joel Katzav, Joseph Berkovitz and Steven Easterbrook have organised a joint workshop entitled, ‘Issues in the Theoretical Foundations of Climate Science: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives’. The workshop took place at the University of Toronto on the 15^th of November 2018, and was supported by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (University of Toronto), the School of Environmental Science (University of Toronto), the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry (University of Queensland) and Victoria College (University of Toronto). The workshop abstract is as follows:

Climate scientists and philosophers have recently examined some of the issues raised by basic concepts in climate science, including the concepts of climate, climate state, climate sensitivity, radiative forcing and internal variability. These issues include, among others, how to characterize the boundary of the climate system, whether climate states should be partly characterized in physical terms, and how to develop a sufficiently general notion of climate sensitivity. This workshop will bring climate scientists and philosophers together to further illuminate such foundational issues and to consider how they might be addressed in a way that helps to further our understanding of climate and our ability to model it. The workshop will also consider the quantification of uncertainty in climate modelling and climate model-based decision making.