Speaker
Description
Rising global temperatures related to increased greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution are contributing to changes in the Earth system with cascading effects across environments and ecosystems. While observational limitations and feedbacks between integrated system components complicate our ability to model future changes, the field of physics, as applied to the matter that makes up the Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere, can help us describe and anticipate the response to changes in the atmosphere’s composition. A strong educational background in introductory physics can lay the needed foundation to tackle many of the challenges related to our changing climate. In this talk, I will discuss the physical basis of our changing climate, why it can be very challenging to characterize certain changes in extreme weather and climate, and what some of the latest research says about these changes. The talk will close with a discussion about the use of machine learning to understand our changing climate and the disproportionate vulnerability faced by historically marginalized communities to extreme weather and climate change.
