thanks to brilliant for sponsoring a
section of this video this is Dan Lunt a
professor in paleoclimate at the
University of Bristol though he
sometimes goes by samwell tarly
and even radagast the brown when writing
scientific papers I'm passionate about
climate science and I'm also very
concerned about what the future might
hold in terms of changes in our climate
but very often that the sorts of
opportunities that we get talk about
climate science are two people and with
people who are already concerned
themselves and they and they already
have an interesting in climate science
so as well as his serious academic work
on the Earth's past climate Dan has
turned his attention to modeling the
atmospheres of fantasy worlds such as
Westeros and middle-earth I saw it as a
way of being able to discuss climate
change to discuss climate models and
their strengths and weaknesses to the
tools that we use to make predictions
about the future that inform policymaker
decisions to discuss those in a context
that was that was interesting and might
grab people's attention and also to have
some fun you know I got I love reading
the books and as a result it just seemed
like a you know a natural thing to do to
discuss to bring together these two
interests of fantasy fiction and and
climate change into one place in the
books and TV and film adaptations of
these fantasy works we get some detail
about the varying regional climates dawn
in A Song of Ice and Fire for example is
described as being very hot and arid
while far to the north the wall is
freezing and battered by winds and then
of course there's the matter of the
variable length seasons with some
winters lasting years and others lasting
months Dan wanted to see how
scientifically accurate these climates
are given all the information that we
have about the fantasy worlds filling in
a couple of gaps so so the way that we
we set up and frame this piece of work
is that we presented it through the eyes
of some well tarly's one of the
well-known characters in Game of Thrones
and we imagined that he arrived in in
old town where he's learning to be what
we call a Meister and he became
interested in climate and we and we
basically told this story of the way in
which he found a climate model and he
learned how to use it and decided to
investigate the climate of the world of
Game of
if you want to read the results of
Meister tarly's work then you can dan
published a paper also available in
Dothraki and high Valyrian detailing how
this experiment was performed link in
the description but you may well ask how
could Dan possibly calculate what the
climate of the world of Game of Thrones
planet us how could Dan well Sam well
possibly calculate how this climate
would work where would they even start
so he had some maps that he found in the
library and so the first thing he did
was to put those that geography of the
planet so where the continents are where
the oceans are where the mountains are
and the rivers and he put all those in
the model along with telling them all
how big the earth it was and her length
of the day was how hot the Sun was and
those are in fact it turns out that
those are the only things that you need
to know in a climate model in order to
be able to simulate the climate because
everything else just emerges from the
physics and the fluid dynamics that is
within that model and that physics and
fluid dynamics is the same whether
you're on planet earth or if you're on
Venus or Mars or Jupiter or Westeros
climate models then take these
fundamental laws of physics and apply
boundary conditions to them such as the
geography the world on earth it looks
like this on Planet sauce it looks like
this that wasn't any info on the
southern continents so this is an
educated guess crucially nothing is
prescribed there's no tweaking dan
didn't tell the model anything about
what he expected to find the only
information that got fed into the model
was the real basics like the length of
the day the geography and the intensity
of the Sun and then physics does the
rest as calculated by the fundamental
equations once every time step in the
computer code and then iterated forwards
and from that emerged all the weather
and climate that was predicted by this
model in the same way that when we have
a weather forecast on on our planet is
done through in a very similar way and
that the climate model is set up for our
particular planet you run it for a few
days and you make a prediction that
emerges from that fluid dynamics and
physics of the atmosphere and ocean
about what the weather is going to do in
climate science you just rather than
three or four day weather forecasts you
run you might on your model for hundreds
or even thousands of years average out
all that weather and what you're left
with is the climate and so this is what
we this is what some were that well we
did we did it I did it but we imagined
that this was some well Tarly doing this
and mr. Charlie assisted by Gilly found
that the regional climates of westeros
pretty closely matched their
descriptions in the books a few things
that we thought might be of interest
will were were were some regions of the
world of Game of Thrones where in our
earth did they have a climate that was
you know it was most similar to if you
like and so for example we looked at the
war the climate of the wall okay so
where the Nights Watch are where in the
world it has a climate like the war well
it turns out that it was you know parts
of northern Finland and northern Sweden
and the area commonly known as as
Lapland actually has a climate very
similar so if you live in those in those
areas then you know what it's like to be
a member of the Nights Watch similarly
we also looked at Casterly Rock which is
the home of the scheming Lannisters and
we found out that Houston in Texas was
actually had a very similar climate Dawn
had a very dry climate desert like
climate you know very probably very
similar to what the Sahara Desert it's
very limited water resources as we as we
find in the book so I think it's
interesting it appears that you're
george RR martin actually had a very
good natural feeling for meteorology if
you like because a lot of what he
describes in the books actually ends up
being quite similar to what is predicted
by the model however there is an
elephant in the room what about the
variable length of seasons in Game of
Thrones how would they work
scientifically they've you know they've
been many different predictions on all
discussions online about how this might
be done whether it's you know some sort
of volcano going off and in certain
seasons that cause the cooling of you
know lots of different theories but the
one that we settled on in some ways
because it was the easiest for us to to
implement is that we suggested that
there's the you know so in our the
going around the Sun and it's always
points in the same direction its axes
its axis of rotation always points in
the same direction so we have the North
Star is the North Star whether it's in
summer or in winter whereas what we
suggested for the world of Game of
Thrones is that that's actually changing
throughout the seat throughout the
seasons and so as the world of Game of
Thrones as Westeros goes around the
central Sun it's actually sort of
tumbling on its axis and so the northern
hemisphere is always point in when its
northern hemisphere summer the northern
hemisphere is always pointing towards
the Sun and when its northern hemisphere
winter the earth is always pointing away
from the Sun all the way through the air
as it goes around
now the earth does actually do something
similar to this but on very long
timescales the progression of the
Earth's axial tilt known as axial
precession is one of several cycles in
the Earth's orbit predicted by Serbian
scientists Milutin Milankovitch in the
1920s these cycles are the cause of the
Earth's ice ages as they slightly vary
them out sunlight the earth receives
down proposed the Westeros underwent
similar cycles but on a much faster
timescale and varying more unpredictably
so we put that into we put that change
into the model if you like compared to
the real earth and saw what happened and
well interestingly for me so this is so
it turns out to be really interesting in
the decades ago so 30 or 40 years ago is
a really common experiment that people
used to do in climate models at the time
in sort of state-of-the-art models at
the time people used to do what we call
a perpetual January experiment in which
they set up their model so it was always
January so little did they know 3040
years ago they were actually simulating
the world of Game of Thrones then and
they used to run these these simulations
with their models at the time in a
perpetual January but in those days that
you didn't have an atmosphere and an
ocean in five miles they tend to be just
an atmosphere and the sea surface
temperatures in the ocean would just
sort prescribed by the user in effect
you'd you'd say what those temperatures
were and they wouldn't check well they
change through the seasons but year on
year they wouldn't change but with the
model we used it actually had an
atmosphere and an ocean and it turned
out that when we put the world in
perpetual January the northern
hemisphere got colder and colder and
colder year on year and the southern
hemisphere got warm
warm until you ended up with basically a
world with two extreme seasons and it
turned out that the winds became so
strong because that change in
temperature between two regions of the
earth in this case the northern
hemisphere in the southern hemisphere
when that gets really large it can
generate very strong winds and
instability in the modelling turned out
the model just cracked it just what we
call blue artic glitched if you like and
couldn't continue so what we had to do
the only way we could resolve this was
actually to reduce the angle of the axis
of rotation of the earth so rather than
being tilted at an angle of 23 degrees
we tilted it only about 10 or 15 degrees
and that was just enough to keep it the
model stable during this permanent winds
permanent January type climate so
because Dan or Samwell sari was using a
more advanced model that allowed for
ocean feedback a world locked in a
perpetual Northern Hemisphere winter
became unstable when it had an axial
tilt the same size of the earth the only
way they could make it stable was by
tilting it at less of an angle to the
Sun and so this actually it was
interesting that I actually learned
something about climate science from
from doing this I didn't may before Dan
has previously done similar work looking
at the climate of Middle Earth writing
as radagast the brown in English with
translations available again this time
in elvish and dwarvish and this all may
seem rather silly at the end of the day
we're using expensive supercomputer time
to calculate the weather on imaginary
planets with Wizards dragons and huge
elephants but to me this work is an
excellent example of creative climate
science communication other people have
linked climates a sport to music and a
variety of visual art forms dan has used
the common cultural framework of the law
the Rings and Game of Thrones to allow
for an easy accessible alternative route
into the fundamentals of climate science
one of the key messages that I was
trying to get across is that the climate
models that we use to make future
projections are are not tuned in some
way they're not statistical models that
are tuned to our own earth they're based
on fundamental fluid mechanics and
physics and so they can actually be
applied to any earth there that Jen
there's that general there that
fundamental
if you like and I thought that this was
an ideal way of getting that getting
that message across so whether you're
doing it through the medium of sports or
people's interests in music or whether
it's science fantasy or fiction I think
anything you can do in that in those
sorts of ways is a good way of
communicating climate science if you
enjoy the idea of applying physics to
fantasy worlds then your next watch
should definitely be the videos I've
made on the scientific viability of
planets in the MCU and star wars links
on the end screen but if you found the
idea of simulating worlds and computer
code interesting then it's actually
super easy to do with a little python
and some basic physics you can easily
simulate the changing temperature of a
planet over time add a few more layers
of complexity and you have a climate
model like Dan's now I learn programming
through years of trial and mostly error
but a better way to learn is through an
expertly written structured course which
allows you to write code in interactive
exercises and quizzes you as you go
learning by doing with brilliant
brilliant is an educational website and
accompanying app with a wide variety of
expertly written courses including
several on computer science their
programming with Python course is an
excellent introduction to the language
and with other courses available such as
algorithm fundamentals and machine
learning you have a great springboard
into writing your own computer code if
you'd like to get started in programming
or any number of other courses in maths
and physics or gift access to the
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brilliant for their continued support of
this channel thank you to Professor
Luntz for being so generous with his
time and also for being so patient we
recorded this about a year ago before
the current lockdown definitely check
out his original paper link in the
description and in particular take a
look at the section on how Westeros
would be affected by a doubling of
atmospheric co2 which we didn't cover in
this video just because of time I'll
give you a hint though it doesn't end
well for King's Landing if you enjoyed
this video please do give it a like and
check out the videos I made on a
scientific viability of the world's
depicted in Star Wars and the MCU if you
like this you'll like them thank you for
watching and I'll see you in the next
one