{"id":191903,"date":"2014-12-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T13:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/nips-oral-session-5-john-carlos-baez\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T20:38:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T03:38:02","slug":"nips-oral-session-5-john-carlos-baez","status":"publish","type":"msr-video","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/video\/nips-oral-session-5-john-carlos-baez\/","title":{"rendered":"NIPS: Oral Session 5 &#8211; John Carlos Baez"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Networks in Climate Science<\/p>\n<p>The El Ni\u00f1o is a powerful but irregular climate cycle that has huge consequences for agriculture and perhaps global warming. Predicting its arrival more than 6 months ahead of time has been difficult. A recent paper by Ludescher et al caused a stir by using ideas from network theory to predict the start of an El Ni\u00f1o toward the end of 2014 with a 3-in-4 likelihood. We critically analyze their technique, related applications of network theory, and also attempts to use neural networks to help model the Earth&#8217;s climate.<\/p>\n<p>John Baez is a professor of mathematics at U.C. Riverside. Until recently he worked on higher category theory and quantum gravity. His internet column &#8220;This Week&#8217;s Finds&#8221; dates back to to 1993 and is sometimes called the world&#8217;s first blog. In 2010, concerned about climate change and the future of the planet, he switched to working on more practical topics and started the Azimuth Project, a collaboration to create a focal point for scientists and engineers interested in environmental issues. One part of this project is developing the mathematics of networks of all kinds: chemical reaction networks, belief networks, signal-flow diagrams, and so on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Networks in Climate Science The El Ni\u00f1o is a powerful but irregular climate cycle that has huge consequences for agriculture and perhaps global warming. Predicting its arrival more than 6 months ahead of time has been difficult. A recent paper by Ludescher et al caused a stir by using ideas from network theory to predict [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":198851,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"research-area":[13556,198583],"msr-video-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-session-type":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"msr-episode":[],"msr-research-theme":[],"class_list":["post-191903","msr-video","type-msr-video","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-ecology-environment","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/T67dyuvX-6Y","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_video_file":"http:\/\/0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/191903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-video"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/191903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146308,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video\/191903\/revisions\/1146308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-video-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-video-type?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-session-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-session-type?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-episode","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-episode?post=191903"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-theme?post=191903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}