Benjamin Santer, an atmospheric scientist in the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will discuss “Investigating the Causes of Climate Change” at Yale on Friday, February 23. His address is part of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies’ 17th Annual Doctoral Research Conference and will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Bowers Auditorium, Sage Hall, 205 Prospect St.
Santer’s research at PCMDI focuses on evaluating how well computer models simulate climate and on improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He received a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship for his research on climate change and was the convening lead author of the chapter, “Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes,” in the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report sponsored by the federal government. In the report, he concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”
At the day-long conference beginning at 9 a.m., student talks will cover a wide range of environmental topics, such as manipulating forests to increase soil carbon storage, the enforcement of environmental law in the Russian Federation, the effects of rainforest conversion on bat diversity, and land use and human health in urban environments.
The conference is free and open to the public. For more information, call Christiane Ehringhaus, 203-865-3946.
