Global warming has been a popular topic of conversation recently. But researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been talking about it for more than 50 years. The UC San Diego marine laboratory is recognized for sounding early alarm bells about greenhouse gases warming the planet. KPBS Environmental Reporter Ed Joyce introduces us to three Scripps scientists playing lead roles in global warming research.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD is one of the oldest and largest global science research centers in the world. It's no surprise that many of the contributors to the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC report, are based here. The report shows that humans are warming the planet and predicts how that warming will change our world. Doing some of what could be arguably called the most important work on the planet, Scripps scientists V. Ramanathan, Lynne Talley and Tim Barnett have made major contributions to global warming research.
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Tim Barnett
is a research marine geophysicist in the Climate Research Division of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the physics of climate change and long-range climate forecasting. (Photo:
Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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Scripps research marine geophysicist Tim Barnett was a lead author and editor on three previous IPCC reports. He's worked on climate research at Scripps for more than 36 years.
Barnett : Yeah, we sort of invented the problem here, or I think first realized it is the way to say it. And have done an awful lot on climate prediction and variability over the decades.
Barnett has conducted extensive research into the climate impacts associated with global warming. But he was once a skeptic.
Barnett : In the late '80s I didn't really believe in greenhouse warming but developing analytic techniques looking at the data from the real world and what the models were saying you're now left with the conclusion that yeah, it's here alive and well and we're in trouble.
Barnett helped develop methods to find out if the planet was getting warmer.
Barnett : So I basically started a group of international scientists to look at this DNA we call it. And in the beginning we couldn't detect much of anything let alone attribute it to anything. But the group prospered over the years and the models got better, the signal got bigger. So now we can say with 99 percent certainty: yeah the climate is changing -- and it's due to us.
He's frustrated by the lack of policies to tackle global warming. But Barnett says, after decades of research, it's clear that change is needed now. He says doubting the science is not a risk the world can afford to take.
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V. Ramanathan is the Alderson Professor of Ocean Sciences at SIO, and the Director of SIO's Center for Atmospheric Sciences. "Ram" was the first to demonstrate that a significant number of anthropogenic trace gases, including chlorofluorocarbons, have strong greenhouse effect potentials that need consideration in a "global warming" scenario. (Photo: Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ) |
Ramanthan, who prefers to be called Ram, was the lead editor for the part of the IPCC report that identifies how human activities have influenced global warming. He's widely recognized for his research on the effects of greenhouse gases and how clouds and water vapor affect climate change and ocean temperatures. Ram emigrated to the United States from India -- not to pursue higher education, but to enjoy what he calls “the good life.”
Ramanthan : I was fascinated by these big American cars of the sixties and seventies. Little did I know that I'd start working on the environment and I would never get on a big fast car because I was talking about how they were damaging the environment, so it's sort of a paradox for me, now I stop using cars, I take bus.
Lynne Talley works in a small office tucked into the southwest corner of a building on the UCSD campus. She has a Pacific Ocean view. But Talley's focus is not on the sea outside her window, but what's happening to the world's oceans. She spends more time looking at data on computer monitors in her office -- screens no bigger than the ones most of us use everyday.
On this afternoon, Talley is looking at a mesmerizing display of nothing but numbers on her monitor. To most of us, the numbers are meaningless. But Talley sees those numbers like most of us see words.
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Lynne Talley is a physical oceanographer and professor who specializes in large-scale ocean circulation, Talley is known as a leading expert on mid-latitude air-sea interaction processes around the world. Such processes are important in climate studies. (Photo: Scripps Institution of Oceanography. ) |
Talley : So, what I can look at is changes in salinity that indicate that there has been climate change, that we are changing the amount of water moving around in the atmosphere. It's raining more in places and evaporating more in other places.
Like other Scripps researchers, Talley spends most of her time making sense of numbers and trends.
Talley : I'm in the office in front of a computer almost all the time. I go to sea at the most every two years for about a month or two, and the time I spend in my office I'm getting ready to go to sea or I'm looking at data that we've collected at sea.
She calls Scripps data central. Although Talley has spent 22 years at Scripps, some of her most rewarding work has come recently.
Talley : And it's really only the last five, six years that I've felt, oh, if you can really make a difference with what you do -- do it.
Lynne Talley, Tim Barnett and V. Ramanathan are three of several Scripps scientists and graduate students making a big difference with their work into the causes and effects of global climate change. Ed Joyce, KPBS News.
