A renowned expert and author of an award-winning book on the science of climate change will focus on one of the world’s most challenging issues during a Georgia State University seminar Friday, Jan. 22.
Richard Somerville, author of “The Forgiving Air: Understanding Environmental Change,” will speak at 1 p.m. in the House Salon of GSU’s Student Center. The lecture, entitled “Climate Change: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?”, is free and open to the public.
Somerville, is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. He also served as a coordinating lead author for a working group of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body tasked with evaluating the risk of climate change that uses the work of thousands of scientists from all over the world.
Somerville’s visit immediately follows the meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Atlanta this week.
Georgia State is taking a leading role in climate change education through the NASA Global Climate Change Education grant, of which Somerville serves as an advisor. In 2009, the university received the $499,950 grant to help improve learning about global climate change for high school students, undergraduate students and teachers in training. The program has also received federal stimulus funds.
The grant additionally provides funds for a unique urban carbon dioxide monitor to further research and teaching in the field.
Georgia State is one of 22 institutions receiving a total of $6.4 million in grants to enhance climate science education and spark interest in science through the use of NASA’s Earth science resources, including observation data and NASA Earth system models.
The Georgia State initiative will combine efforts of the Georgia State Department of Geosciences, the Georgia State College of Education, GSU’s Center for Teaching and Learning, the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, the University System of Georgia Early College Program and the University System of Georgia Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Initiative.
GSU’s co-principal investigators in the project include Cherilynn Morrow, professor of physics and astronomy; Jeremy Diem, associate professor of geography; W. Crawford Elliott, chair of the Department of Geosciences and Lisa Martin-Hansen, assistant professor of middle-secondary education and instructional technology.
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Archived to this website on 7/24/21.