Benjamin Santer, atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will deliver two public lectures during his visit to UVM.
It took decades to come to consensus (minus a few contrarians) that our planet is getting warmer — and that humans have a significant hand in causing climate change.
One of the key scientists who helped unravel this scientific puzzle, Benjamin Santer, will speak on "How do we know human activities have influenced global climate change?" Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. in Carpenter Auditorium, Given Building.
The event, part of UVM's Burack President's Distinguished Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.
Climate fingerprints
Dr. Santer's early research on the climatic effects of greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols contributed to the historic "discernible human influence" conclusion of the 1995 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and he was a key contributor to the scientific reports of the IPCC which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
An atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Santer's research focuses on climate models and identification of natural and human "fingerprints" in climate records.
He spent much of the last decade addressing the contentious issue of whether model-simulated changes in atmospheric temperatures match up with satellite-based temperature measurements.
"Ben Santer made seminal contributions to the Nobel Prize-winning work of the IPCC," said Susan Solomon, co-chair of one of the IPCC working groups. "In particular, he was the key scientific leader in the pioneering statement of the second assessment report that there was a discernible human influence on climate."
"There can be little doubt that the 2007 IPCC statement — that it can now be said it is very likely most of the warming of the past 50 years is attributable to greenhouse gases — owes much to the remarkable scientific work of Ben Santer," Solomon said.
Santer holds a doctorate in climatology from the University of East Anglia, England. After working to develop "climate fingerprinting" methods at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, he joined the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Inter-comparison at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Recognition and awards for his work in climate-change detection include a Distinguished Scientist Fellowship from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2005, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award in 2002, and a MacArthur Fellowship (Genius Award) in 1998.
In addition to his main lecture, Santer will also be participating in a roundtable discussion with students, faculty and staff campus on climate issues and will also give a free public lecture on "Incorporating model quality information in detection and attribution studies: One model, one vote? " in Stafford 101, Thursday Feb. 12 at 11:30 am.
Information: jaleong@uvm.edu, (802) 656-0552.