Talking Climate

It’s true the Earth has experienced periods of global warming in its past. The largest such warming event in the past 90 million years - since the time dinosaurs roamed Earth - was the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 56 million years ago. Average global temperatures increased by 4–5°C over a period of 3,000–10,000 years. Human beings were definitely not walking the Earth back then, but today scientists are able to piece together evidence of how and why this ancient g...

Dr. Jon Wang, an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences here at the U, manages the Dynamic Carbon and Ecosystems Lab, or DYCE Lab. He has access to high-resolution airborne laser scanning data to map forests across the world to measure to set benchmarks for that data and monitor for changes. Wang is interested in how climate change and human activity are rapidly transforming terrestrial ecosystems such as with wildfire, timber harvest, urbanization, and drought.&...

Austin Green is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology with the College of Science’s Science Research Initiative, or SRI program. His specialty is using camera traps to monitor and capture image data of wildlife in wilderness areas. His research involves gathering this data to study wild animal behavior, their movement patterns, and how human behavior is impacting wildlife. Some of his research has suggested that climate change is making life harder for wildlife to adapt...

For this episode we talk with Dr. Marie Jackson a Research Professor in the Geology & Geophysics department here at the University of Utah. Dr. Jackson’s work is centered in mineralogy, pyroclastic volcanism, and material science, but she applies her work to the realms of engineering, archeology, and more. She’s done a lot of pioneering work on understanding ancient Roman concrete, their composition, structure and how they age over time. Working to make a modern proxy of the concrete has ...

The new Climate of Hope exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah offers museum visitors a more localized and solutions-oriented framing of climate change than other exhibits have done in past years. In this episode, exhibit developer Lisa Thompson and Lynne Zummo, the curator of Learning Sciences at NHMU, take us through the interactive exhibit where they are gathering important data that may improve communication techniques and strategies in years to come. wilkescenter.utah.edu/podcast/...

The Wilkes Center held its second annual Climate Solutions Hackathon on January 26th. This was not a coding “hackathon” but a competition to find innovative solutions to the daunting challenges of climate change-driven wildfires. U students were asked to form teams, choose one of five themes to focus their solution, and accomplish this in 24 hours. Ultimately, the Wilkes Center received a total of 17 submissions, with 3 teams winning the top prizes. In this episode I share m...

One of the many challenges facing the world in the coming decades to reach carbon neutrality - in order for climate change to stabilize – is the challenge of both capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide that is emitted from power plants and putting it underground. This is what is called Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage. And accomplishing this on a large scale will be necessary all across the world to meet carbon emissions reduction goals laid out by the Paris Climate Agreement. ...

What does it take for whole cities to take the actions necessary to adapt to a changing climate? What is required for millions of people who live in the same metropolis to agree to certain changes to become resilient to climate change-driven natural disasters? These are the questions that Malcolm Araos has been asking. Malcolm Araos is a Wilkes Center post-doctoral student in the Department of Geography. Previously Araos, who is originally from Canada, was a PhD student in Sociology at ...