"Global Warming"
"Global Warming" has become a very mainstream term. And it has as much controversy as ever associated with it. So, I'm going to talk about it too. First off, I'll share some pertinent personal history.
In 2004 and 2005, while I was working at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Wisconsin as an engineer, I wasn't fulfilled in my job. I found myself learning about the earth and the environment in my free time. I was especially interested in this controversy called Global Warming, and did some soul searching and decided to make the big career change in 2005.
In the Fall of 2005 I enrolled in the Atmospheric Science PhD program at the University of Colorado - Boulder. My research involves modeling the effects of sulfate aerosols on climate change. It is, at times, an overwhelming amount of knowledge to digest, but overall it is very interesting to me.
Now it is 2007, and I have more than a year under my belt. What have I learned? First off, there isn't as much "controversy" around global warming as the media would have you think. About 95% of climate scientists believe the earth is warming, humans are to blame, and it is potentially dangerous to the future of our species. So, why does the media portray it with controversy? Two reasons - One, the oil industry funds scientists with an obvious conflict of interest to twist the data and statistics to make it look like there still is controversy. Two, the media tries to portray everything from both sides, to gain as much readership as possible. This results in an American public that is too confused to force our government to make important carbon dioxide regulations.
Anyways, back to my research. Sulfate Aerosols are tiny particles in the air, formed mainly by anthropogenic (human-induced) sulfur dioxide emissions. The main source of sulfur dioxide is power plants. Sulfate aerosols cause acid rain. They also reflect sunlight, causing a cooling effect on climate. Older generation computer models did not include the effects of sulfates. This is the reason why climate models historically predicted that the earth would warm more than it actually has. Now that computer models incorporate the cooling effect due to sulfate aerosols, they predict temperatures with better accuracy as shown in the diagram below.
lt is clear from the diagram above that natural forcings do not account for the earth's observed temperatures over the past 150 years. When anthropogenic factors are taken into effect (mainly carbon dioxide and sulfate aerosols), the models predict temperatures with impressive accuracy as shown in the third plot.
So, where does my research fit in? Well, we are just beginning to understand the effects of sulfate aerosols. In fact, the computer models currently only include its effects in a very rudimentary fashion. As humans add fewer sulfate aerosols to the atmosphere, it is important to understand what happens. I am working with a new microphysical model called CARMA, that my advisor Brian Toon co-created, to include the detailed effects of sulfate aerosols in a general climate model called CAM.
So I have a little over a year down, and about 4 years to go. So far, so good.
So, that's my research, and hopefully you learned a thing or two about global warming as well.
this page updated on November 21, 2006