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Show Notes
On the second episode of Not Cool, Ariel delves into some of the basic science behind climate change and the history of its study. She is joined by Dr. Joanna Haigh, an atmospheric physicist whose work has been foundational to our current understanding of how the climate works. Joanna is a fellow of The Royal Society and recently retired as Co-Director of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. Here, she gives a historical overview of the field of climate science and the major breakthroughs that moved it forward. She also discusses her own work on the stratosphere, radiative forcing, solar variability, and more.
Topics discussed include:
- History of the study of climate change
- Overview of climate modeling
- Radiative forcing
- What’s changed in climate science in the past few decades
- How to distinguish between natural climate variation and human-induced global warming
- Solar variability, sun spots, and the effect of the sun on the climate
- History of climate denial
References discussed include:
- A two-dimensional calculation including atmospheric carbon dioxide and stratospheric ozone, Haigh & Pyle (1979)
- The Effects of Doubling the CO2 Concentration on the Climate of a General Circulation Model, Manabe & Wetherald (1975)
- UK Climate Change Act
There was a particularly notable paper in 1975 in which some scientists called Manabe and Wetherald did a doubled CO2 experiment, and looked at what happened to the climate. And they showed many of the features that we would recognize today in climate change: surface warming, more warming at the poles than at the equator, changes in the hydrological cycle and circulations. So, many of those general factors were understood right back then.
~Joanna Haigh
