Tales of twin cities: what are climate analogues good for? Giovanni Valente (Polytechnic of Milano)

Tales of twin cities: what are climate analogues good for?

Giovanni Valente
(Polytechnic of Milano)

SERPIERI LECTURES 2024 (Series of lessons for ReMeST PhD students*)
PhD program in Research and Method in Science and Technology
(University of Urbino)

[Abstract]
This talk, based on joint work with Hernan Bobadilla, Rawad El Skaf and Francesco Nappo, provides an epistemological assessment of climate analogue methods, with specific reference to the use of spatial analogues in the study of the future climate of target locations. Our contention is that, due to formal and conceptual inadequacies of geometrical dissimilarity metrics and the loss of relevant information, especially when reasoning from the physical to the socio-economical level, purported inferences from climate analogues of the spatial kind we consider here prove limited in a number of ways. Indeed, we formulate five outstanding problems concerning the search for best analogues, which we call the problem of non-uniqueness of the source, problem of non-uniqueness of the target, problem of average, problem of non-causal correlations and problem of inferred properties, respectively. In the face of such problems, we then offer two positive recommendations for a fruitful application of this methodology to the assessment of impact, adaptation and vulnerability studies of climate change, especially in the context of what we may prosaically dub “twin cities”. Arguably, such recommendations help decision-makers constrain the set of plausible climate analogues by integrating local knowledge relevant to the target locations.

[Biography]
Giovanni Valente (PhD: University of Maryland, College Park, US, 2009) is a full professor in Logic and Philosophy of Science in the Department of Mathematics at the Politecnico di Milano, where he moved after working at the University of Pittsburgh. His main research focuses on the philosophy and foundations of physics. In particular, he deals with the interpretation of quantum probability, the issues of causality, ontology and symmetry-breaking in relativistic quantum field theory, and the problem of irreversibility in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. In addition, he works on various philosophical issues arising in other fields of science, especially climate science, economics and evidence-based medicine. He also has keen interests in broader topics of philosophy of science, such as time, models, inter-theoretical reduction, scientific reasoning and public policy-making.

[*]
The Serpieri Lectures are series of seminars aimed mainly at the training of Ph.D. students of the ReMeST program who do research in different areas: Chemical Sciences, Earth Sciences, Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Industrial and Information Engineering, Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences and Philosophical Sciences.Quantum chemical modelling and beyond


SERPIERI LECTURES 2024 (Series of lessons for ReMeST PhD students*)
PhD program in Research and Method in Science and Technology
(University of Urbino)