(Written and Photographed by Li Fei) On October 27, Professor Olivier Pironneau, an academician of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor at Sorbonne University, visited Beihang Hangzhou International Campus to deliver an academic lecture titled “Radiative Transfer in Cloudy Atmospheres and the Impact of Aircraft Contrails on Climate”. Beihang University Vice President Zhao Weisheng, Party Committee Deputy Secretary and Dean of the H3I Hong Guanxin, Party Secretary of the School of Mathematical Sciences Zhang Xiao, Party Committee Deputy Secretary of H3I Ying Weidong, and H3I Vice Dean Zhang Wei attended the event. More than 200 faculty members and students from H3I, the School of Mathematical Sciences, the School of Integrated Circuits Science and Engineering, and the School of Artificial Intelligence participated.
Academician Pironneau approached the topic from the perspective of general issues in climate modeling, presenting the latest advances in applying computational mathematics to climate studies. Using radiative transfer and Navier-Stokes equations, he simulated temperature changes in the Earth’s atmosphere affected by electromagnetic radiation. By simplifying complex 7-dimensional problems into more manageable 3-dimensional integro-differential equations, his numerical implementation of the H-matrix compression scheme made it possible to measure the impact of clouds and aircraft contrails on atmospheric temperatures. This method offers high computational efficiency and can adapt to absorption and scattering functions that vary with spatial location and frequency, providing new insights into factors influencing climate.
During his stay in Hangzhou, Olivier Pironneau also visited the research laboratories at H3I and engaged in in-depth discussions with faculty and students in a seminar on computational mathematics.
Olivier Pironneau is a French mathematician, professor at Sorbonne University (formerly known as Pierre and Marie Curie University), and academician of the French Academy of Sciences. He is internationally recognized for his expertise in computational fluid dynamics, scientific computing, computational engineering, optimization design, numerical analysis, and partial differential equations. Pironneau was elected as an academician of the French Academy of Sciences in 2002 and a foreign academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2004. He has received significant awards, including the French National Order of Merit, the Marcel Dassault Prize, and the Blaise Pascal Prize.
(Approved by: Hong Guanxin, Zhang Wei, Xu Ran)
Edited by: Yuan Xiaohui
