Middle- and high-school teachers came to Princeton’s campus to learn about the causes and effects of climate change in a week-long professional development workshop; developed and facilitated by Professor Laure Resplandy, Lab Manager Danielle Schmitt and a graduate student in the Resplandy group, Abigale Wyatt.
The workshop was developed to increase the participants’ understanding of the scientific basis of climate and climate modeling, predictions and impacts of climate change, the role of human activities in the climate system, and to introduce them to cutting-edge technologies that have the potential to mitigate the effects of a changing climate the workshop. Throughout the week they engaged in a variety of investigations, such as exploring patterns in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (including the role of terrestrial vegetation and marine phytoplankton), learned about climate models and supercomputing, and toured Princeton’s High Performance Computing Research Center (which houses a powerful super-computer used to run climate models). They also used a climate simulator to investigate the effects of different CO2 concentrations and analyzed how projected temperature changes could impact not only ecosystems, but also sea level at regional and global scales.
The teachers designed their own experiments using high albedo paint and collected data to model how changes in roof albedo could offset global warming. Two activities using climate projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report were also incorporated. One explored Physical Science Basis (Working Group I) data on temporal and spatial patterns of projected temperature, precipitation, soil moisture, and how these variables are related as well as how the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events might affect these variables.
The other explored illustrative pathways from the Mitigation of Climate Change IPCC Report (Working Group III) that are projected to stay below 2°C warming and incorporate different combinations of fossil fuel sources, renewable energy sources, and various carbon dioxide removal technologies and the feasibility of implementing these pathways.
Funding and support were provided by Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental Institute, Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System, Program in Teacher Preparation and The Department of Geosciences
Written by Danielle Schmitt, Academic Lab Manager