On Monday, EPS 109: Earth Resources and the Environment students traveled to the Fore River generating station in Weymouth, MA to learn about combined cycle power and the factors that determine community distribution and use.
Talk Title: Advances in Global Hydrology based on GRACE Satellite Gravimetry
Abstract: Two decades of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite data have significantly advanced our understanding of global hydrology. GRACE satellites measure variations in Earth’s gravity which are controlled mostly by water storage changes, such as those related to...
Abstract: Abstract: Now more than ever we need to understand how peatlands are formed, how they thrive, and how they can be maintained to control CO2 emissions. I will describe results from a unique field program in Borneo designed to study the coupled ecological and hydrological processes that operate in tropical peatlands. We show how tropical peatlands exist because of a positive feedback between peat accumulation and water table rise. Organic material from tropical rain forests accumulates over millennia in...
Talk Title: Reconstructions of Cenozoic atmospheric CO2 and ocean carbon cycle perturbations
Abstract: My research interests focus on understanding the role of the ocean, and in particular the role of marine carbonate chemistry in global climate change. As I was originally trained as a (marine) biologist, my way of approaching paleoceanographic questions often...
Talk Title: Climatic effects of local land cover and land use change
Abstract:
Land cover on the Earth’s surface typically varies at spatial scales smaller than the grid size of a climate model. Similarly, contemporary land use activities, such as urbanization and deforestation, are occurring at local scales than cannot be resolved by climate models. Heterogeneity in land cover causes spatial variability in...
Talk Title: Carbon-Water cycle interactions from a measurement and modeling perspective
Abstract: Stomata act as the gate-keeper of carbon uptake and transpiration water losses and can control regional-scale fluxes. Recent studies have found that soil moisture variations are a dominant driver for inter-annual variations in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate, both...
Talk Title: Lessons Learned about the Breathing of the Biosphere, from a Californian Network of Greenhouse Gas Flux Measurement Towers
Abstract: This talk will revolve around lessons learned by collecting quasi-continuous and long term trace gas fluxes from a network of managed and natural fields sites across California. We will investigate if and how fluxes are...
Talk Title: Staring into the Fire: Using Observations to Understand Wildfires and Smoke
Abstract: Recent increases in western U.S. wildfire activity have made wildland fires and the associated smoke a significant challenge for society. This problem will only grow as the climate warms. I will discuss how the atmospheric science community has used both new in situ observations and...
Talk Title: The Thermal Histories of Solar System Moons and Small Bodies
Abstract: The heat flow of a planetary body plays a major role in defining its evolution and current composition, driving processes from internal differentiation during its formation period through geological activity at the current time. However, these same active processes erase many of the surface signatures that would allow us to reconstruct its long-term thermal history. In this talk, I will present novel observational approaches, using primarily the ALMA interferometer...
Talk Title: Quantifying causes and consequences of historical changes in extreme climate conditions
Abstract: Although the world is making progress in ramping up ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through global, national, local and non-governmental frameworks, it has now also become clear that we are already being impacted by the global warming that has already occurred...
Talk Title: Classification, implication, and parametrization of surface heterogeneity and its interaction with the dynamics of the lower atmosphere
Abstract: Land-atmosphere exchange and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics over heterogeneous surfaces are of significance to a wide array of geophysical and engineering applications. Yet, despite over five decades of intense...
Vertical velocities in the ocean are prohibitively slow to measure directly, so physical oceanographers have been attempting to estimate them by other means for several decades. There is strong motivation to do so; upwelling fuels marine life by bringing nutrient-rich water into the sunlit surface layer. Upwelling also affects the atmosphere by cooling the surface, which affects wind and clouds. The surprising abundance and diversity of life—from corals to fish to seabirds—around equatorial islands, has been...
