How Can Regional Models Advance Climate Science?

The Joy of Why

Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine

Science, Life Sciences

4.9 • 577 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Climate models have changed the way we view the world. While effective, these models are imperfect, and scientists are constantly looking at ways to improve their accuracy and predictability.

MIT professor Elfatih Eltahir has spent decades developing complex models to understand how climate change affects vulnerable regions like the Nile Basin and Singapore. In this episode of The Joy of Why, Eltahir tells co-host Steven Strogatz how growing up near the Nile in Sudan helped him realize that climate change doesn’t occur in isolation. To better understand climate-related impacts and to create more effective adaptation strategies, Eltahir says we need regional models that incorporate contextual data like disease spread and population growth. Eltahir also discusses his “Equation of the Future of Africa,” and he introduces the concept of “outdoor days,” which he hopes can improve public perception about climate change.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Steve Strogatz, and I'm Jana Levin.
0:08.1	And this is The Joy of Why, a podcast from Quantum Magazine exploring some of the biggest
0:13.3	unanswered questions in math and science today.
0:18.6	Hi, Jana.
0:19.7	Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing today? Yeah, good. We. How are you?
0:21.4	I'm good. How are you doing today?
0:23.0	Yeah, good. We're back to it.
0:25.2	We are, and our discussion is going to be about something I don't think we've ever talked about with each other, which is climate change.
0:32.8	Yeah, I don't think we've had that conversation, surprisingly.
0:35.6	Such an important topic in science and world politics and the future of our planet, you know,
0:41.6	what our kids are going to be facing.
0:44.0	We hear about it all the time, how all kinds of records are being broken in temperature, wildfires,
0:50.1	droughts, sea level changes.
0:52.9	Yeah, I live in a coastal city. I live on an island. Oh, yeah, I level changes. Yeah, I live in a coastal city.
0:54.4	I live on an island.
0:55.7	Oh, yeah, I heard that.
0:58.6	We're referring here to Manhattan, yes.
1:01.1	It's true, though, right?
1:02.4	But so I realized that I don't really know as much as I should about how the climate projections are being made.
1:09.0	We hear all the time about climate models,
1:11.3	but what goes into those models and what is really the science of climate prediction?
1:16.6	Also, what do we know about how things are changing around the world? And how are those
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