The natural sciences that allow us to understand the environment are at the heart of developing strategies to adapt to, survive, and thrive as climate changes. Water is at the heart of many of the most complex problems in climate sciences: understanding the behavior of clouds in a warmer world, how land ecosystems mediate evolving rainfall patterns, and when weather patterns trigger decline of the polar ice sheets. The behavior of these macrophysical problems can be interrogated by knowing the details of the microscopic properties of water: small variations in the abundance of naturally occurring heavy oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in water. Utilizing the stable isotope chemistry requires integrating many scientific disciplines and linking disparate areas of theoretical, observational and modeling techniques.

Professor Noone will give examples of the coupling of carbon and water cycles in forests, and in the interaction of forest fire and clouds. He will discuss the importance of the sciences which form the kernel that enable evidence-based decision making, and the opportunities for leveraging physical sciences to empower communities to shape their responses to climate change.

Professor Noone is a natural scientist whose specialty is on understanding relationships between water, clouds and changing global wind patterns. He is most well-known for his work blending isotope ratios in the atmosphere and on the landscape with more traditional atmospheric science, in both modeling and observational contexts. He helps build and use climate models that are used to predict future climate change. He has served as a member of several NASA science teams including earth observing spacecraft and aircraft missions designed to measure the composition of the atmosphere.

Professor Noone's research takes him and his students around the world to investigate climate change: from the rainstorms over lush forests of New Guinea, equatorial oases of the Galapagos, desert mountain tops in Hawaii and the endless ice fields of Greenland. He delights in teaching weather and climate in the classroom, and on his field classes observing climate, but his preferred platform to observe wind and waves has a sail.

Refreshments will be served in the basement foyer of building 303 (303-B00L2) from 6pm, prior to the lecture.

Image courtesy of NASA