The Climate Academy

Dan is a scientist working at NCAR and his main interests span the fields of oceanography, biogeochemistry and computer science. Here he explains why biogeochemistry matters for projections of future climate change, and we have an interesting exchange on the effects of pollution on fisheries and sustainability. Finally, we talk about how we deal with negativity and rejection in academia and ways to feel better about them (it was actually a fun chat!). Check out Dan's work: https://danielwhitt.github.io/

It was a pleasure to chat with Nicola Maher who is now a CIRES visiting fellow in Boulder, Colorado. We discussed her journey from Australia to the US through Germany and our common love for gluehwein. We had interesting discussions regarding the large ensemble and her direct involvement with both the simulations and the outreach through the SMILE seminar series. Check her work out: https://nicolamaher.weebly.com/.

In this interview, I had the pleasure to interview Allison Wing from Florida State University. She gave me a clear and concise review of what we know about the effects of hurricanes on climate change, plus she explained to me the motivations behind the Radiative Convective Equilibrium model inter-comparison project (led by her), the unexpected findings and the way forward. Learn more: http://myweb.fsu.edu/awing/index.html

Tim Woollings is an associate professor at the University of Oxford. In this special episode aimed at a general audience, we talk about his book called ‘Jet Stream’, which covers the mechanisms behind atmospheric circulation patterns, the impacts of the jet stream on today’s climate and the impacts due to climate change. If you want to watch the video interview go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va1cQg-BqPU&feature=youtu.be. You can find more info about Tim here: https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/contacts/people/woollings and the book here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44512243-jet-stream.

Jhordanne Jones is a Ph.D. student at Colorado State University researching tropical cyclones. We talked about her past research on changes in tropical cyclones due to climate change and her more recent research on large-scale atmospheric forcing of tropical cyclones in the present climate using reanalyses and climate models. We also talked about her journey into becoming a Ph.D. student in the US coming from Jamaica, as well as diversity and inclusion. Learn more about her research on her website: https://tropical.colostate.edu/Group/Jones/index.html

Today I am interviewing Sylvia Dee, an assistant professor at Rice University leading the Climate, Energy and Water Lab. Dr. Dee is a climate scientist specializing in atmospheric modeling, water isotope physics, and paleoclimate data-model comparison. In this conversation we discussed the intricacies of including proxy data in data assimilation products, climate modelling and inferring possible future rainfall changes from climates of the past. Read more about Sylvia’s research on her website: https://sylviadeeclimate.org/.

In this episode, I am joined by Yemi Adebiyi who is a postdoc at UCLA and will be starting a faculty position at UC-Merced in 2021. Yemi studies the impact of clouds and aerosols in climate. During our conversation we talked about his recent paper on underestimation of large dust particles in climate models and implications. Yemi also leads two important outreach activities, both aimed at increasing diversity and inclusion of people of color in academia and science. We had a very eye-opening exchange on the latter and more broadly on inclusion in academia, drawing some parallels between different kind of minorities. You can find more about Yemi's activities on his website: https://sites.google.com/view/aadebiyi/

The guest of this episode is Jessica Luo, a research oceanographer at Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GDFL) in Princeton, NJ. Jessica and I talked about the very important role of ocean biogeochemistry in mediating carbon fluxes from the atmosphere, focusing on her most research paper on data driven modelling of gelatinous zooplankton. At GFDL Jessica is working in implementing ocean biogeochemistry in their earth system model and in this episode she tells us why it is important to know all these fine details to better predict climate change. Visit Jessica’s website for more information on her research https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/jessica-luos-homepage/.

The guest of this episode is Kaustubh Thirumalai, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona. We talked about him growing up and studying in India, and changing his path from chemical engineering to climate. We also talked a lot about networking in academia. The paper we discussed is about how sources of methane in the atmosphere from paleo records are related to orbital variability, and the implications for modern climate change. Learning all the things we need to take into account when analyzing paleo records was eye- opening…. And his spectral analysis of long paleo records is absolutely interesting and potentially applicable to other fields… so listen on! You can find more info on Kau’s website https://thirumalai.geo.arizona.edu/.

In this episode I interview Jie He from Georgia Tech. We discuss his research papers in which he investigates rainfall in the present climate and in response to future climate change, in particular the coupling with ocean dynamics. You can find more info on his research here: http://he.eas.gatech.edu/