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Richard and Joe welcomed climate researchers, Dan Cayan, Ph.D and Jeff Severinghaus, Ph.D to discuss their research and findings relating to climate, particularly the related impacts, trends and predictions.
Dr. Daniel R. Cayan is a Research Meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), University of California, San Diego, and a Researcher in the U.S. Geological Survey. His research is aimed at understanding climate variability and changes over the Pacific Ocean and North America. His specific interests are the impacts of climate changes on water resources and other sectors in western North America. Dan was a lead author for a climate change report commissioned by Governor Schwarzenegger and his work continues for the state of California at the comprehensive CA Climate Change web portal at www.climatechange.ca.gov and for the July 2012 report, “Our Changing Climate 2012: Vulnerability and Adaptation to the Increasing Risks from Climate Change in California.”
Dr. Cayan received his bachelor’s degree in Meteorology and Oceanography in 1971 from the University of Michigan. He received a Ph.D. in Oceanography in 1990 from the University of California, San Diego. He has worked at Scripps since 1977 and for the U.S. Geological Survey Water Resources Division since 1991.
Jeff Severinghaus Ph.D is a professor of geosciences in the Geosciences Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His current research interests center on using trapped bubbles of gases contained in ice cores to track changes in ancient climate. Dr. Severinghaus’s analysis of isotopes of nitrogen and argon contained in Greenland ice core bubbles have revealed that the earth went through a period of rapid warming at the end of the last ice age, some 11,000 years ago. He found that the region experienced a 15-degree-Fahrenheit jump in temperature in less than a decade, the impact of which was felt throughout the Northern Hemisphere. His research raises the question of whether the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels could also produce a rapid change in climate, rather than the slow, steady rise in temperature many computer models of global climate now predict.
Dr. Severinghaus received a bachelor’s degree in geology from Oberlin College in 1983, a master’s degree in geological sciences from UC Santa Barbara in 1988, and a Ph.D in geological sciences from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in 1995.
We asked Dan and Jeff to predict where our regional and global climate may be headed and what actions may, or may not, be recommended.
Other reading on climate change from our guests:
“Repeating the Unthinkable”. Dr. Jeff Severinghaus
Story on a student in Jeff Severinghaus’s lab on the Little Ice Age. Dr. Jeff Severinghaus
Recent Sacramento Bee op-ed by Dr. Dan Cayan.
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