Ankur Desai, chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will join the Notre Dame community to discuss the outsized impact land has on local and global climate, although it covers less than a third of the globe. We have a relatively good understanding of human and natural changes to land surface radiation, albedo, and momentum budgets, hydrologic routing, and carbon, water, and nutrient cycle, but do we have a good enough understanding to harness those for mitigation and adaptation to climate change via direct intervention on land-atmosphere interactions? Desai will discuss this and some of the observational and modeling advances and limitations as we move forward towards building resilient communities.
Professor Desai is the Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and department chair in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His lab studies and has authored nearly 200 articles regarding ecosystems, weather, and climate. This work spans from Wisconsin to the globe and uses both long-term observations in nature and advanced computer simulations. He received his bachelor's degree in computer science and environmental studies from Oberlin College, earned his master's degree in geography from University of Minnesota, and earned his Ph.D. in meteorology from The Pennsylvania State University. Professor Desai is an American Meteorological Society Certified Consulting Meteorologist and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Notre Dame Seminars on Sustainability Series is a signature lecture series organized by the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative that brings global sustainability leaders and world-class scholars to campus for knowledge sharing and engagement with the Notre Dame community.
Originally published at sustainability.conductor.nd.edu.