August 25, 2016
Colloquium Topic: Climate Change and its Challenges
The three questions that are at the center of the Climate debate are: Is Climate Change real? Is Climate Change part of natural variability or is it human-induced? How reliable are the predictions of the consequences of Climate Change, and what can we do about it?
Climate has indeed always changed and data for the last 600,000 years will be shown and explained. We will discuss the possible role of humans in creating the energy imbalance with more incoming solar radiation than energy radiated back to space. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution around 1750, the rate of increase in surface temperatures and trace gases has never been so high.
The uncertainties about the evolution of Climate will be shown to depend on the very complex nature of the Climate system with its feedback mechanisms and tipping points. Climate Change in the 21st century is a major scientific, economic and political challenge.
Colloquium Speaker: Franco Einaudi
Dr. Franco Einaudi received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1961 from the Politecnico of Turin, Italy and his M.S. and Ph.D. in 1967 in electrical engineering with specialization in plasma physics and atmospheric sciences from Cornell University.
Dr. Einaudi's career has included two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Physics Department of the University of Toronto, 1967-1969, ten years with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences of the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado, 1969-1979, and 8 years at the Georgia Institute of Technology as Professor of Geophysical Sciences, 1979-1987.
Dr. Einaudi joint the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland in 1987 where he became the Head of the Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Branch (1988-1990). and Chief of the Laboratory for Atmospheres (1990-2000).
Dr. Einaudi retired in 2010 from the position of Director of the Earth Sciences Division at Goddard, position that he held for 10 years. In this position, Dr. Einaudi was responsible for planning, organizing, and evaluating a broad program of scientific research, both theoretical and experimental, in the study of the Earth. The program ranged from basic research to the development of flight experiments, to mission operations and data analysis.
An atmospheric dynamicist, Einaudi is recognized internationally for his work on gravity waves, gravity waves/turbulence interaction, propagation of gravity waves in a moist atmosphere, and the role of gravity waves in initiating and interacting with storms.
Dr. Einaudi is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is a member of the American Geophysical Union.
He served as President of the American Meteorological Society in 2006.