Climate change talk is Monday at Lab
Much has been written lately about global warming and its effect on the Earth’s climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last week that suggests that greenhouse gases created by humans are the likely cause of warming. It projects that carbon dioxide is likely to more than double its pre-industrial value by 2100 in the business-as-usual scenario.
The report also says this doubling of carbon dioxide will increase the average surface temperature of the Earth by 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. This conclusion leaves a large uncertainty of more than two degrees, which impacts decisions about future fossil energy use.
At a talk Monday (February 12) at the Laboratory, Stephen Schwartz, chief scientist of the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Science Program and senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will discuss his research about improving predictions of climate change during a Frontiers in Geosciences Colloquium. The talk begins at 3 p.m., in the Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3 and is open to the Laboratory work force.
Schwartz will discuss an alternative approach to predicting climate change. Schwartz’s approach uses measured trends of both carbon dioxide and temperature over the last several decades to predict warming. These data include short-term complexities in the climate system, such as the role of clouds in climate change. Schwartz’s results suggest that the Earth will warm 2 degrees Celsius due to the doubling of carbon dioxide. He also will describe the implications his results have on energy policy.
Schwartz graduated from Harvard College in 1963 and earned his doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968. He also was a University of Cambridge Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Division hosts the talk.
For more information, contact Manvendra Dubey of Hydrology and Geochemistry (EES-6) at 5-3128 or dubey@lanl.gov by electronic mail.
