Jim Anderson Event Recap
By Rachel Mehler
On April 8th, HUCEG was lucky enough to hear from Jim Anderson, Philip S. Weld Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Earth and Planetary Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, about climate monitoring and a new approach to quantitatively forecasting risk in our climate system.
Anderson, whose research was instrumental in the discovery of the ozone hole, outlined a key obstacle to the development of quantitative forecasts of risk associated with climate change: our lack of high spatial resolution observations. He pointed out that no forecast successfully predicted the rate of escalation of 2020’s various climate disasters, such as wildfires, storms, and Arctic sea ice disintegration. According to Anderson, this represents a serious failure in current climate modeling systems.
These types of simultaneous, 3-D, high-spatial-resolution observations—which couple a number of mechanistically-linked variables—were instrumental in demonstrating the mechanism and forecast for ozone depletion. Information from these models eventually convinced the scientific community of ozone depletion, and inspired the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer that has been successfully in restoring the ozone in Antarctica through the banning of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Anderson discussed technology that might help fix the severe deficiency of risk forecasting, like the development of the design for a stratospheric aircraft with the ability to focus with very high resolution measurements.
During the question and answer component of the talk (after which Anderson declared that he had never had better questions asked in a thirty minute period, ever,) he talked about his experience testifying before Congress, addressed potential privacy issues associated with the stratospheric aircraft, and expressed serious concern at the “breathtaking” rate at which changes to our climate are occurring.
“We’re losing the ability to determine the wise path forward,” he remarked. When asked about the potential tradeoffs of the development of clean energy capabilities for developing countries, Anderson said he is “optimistic about bringing economic growth worldwide by the flow of electrons rather than the combustion of fossil fuels.”
A sobering note that Anderson reminded his audience of a couple of times during his talk was the quickly-increasing flow of refugees displaced by the ravages of climate change. “Developed nations,” he urged, “have a responsibility to deal with this-- the scope and scale of this has to be understood.”