Forecast: climate conversations with Michael White
Latest Episodes
Peter Bauer on numerical weather prediction
Numerical weather prediction (NWP) is like excellent coffee in the Bay Area: so common that it is now taken for granted, obscuring the decades of expertise, knowledge, and technique underlying the whole operation. In episode 77 of Forecast,
From porometers to the planet with Steve Running
Steve Running from the University of Montana helped to invent the field of large-area, quantitative ecology. Steve was also my MS and PhD advisor – a role that doubtless was the most fulfilling of his career. This August,
Yao Tandong on research in the Third Pole
Yao Tandong tells Mike about realizing his long-held dream: working of the Tibetan Plateau, now as director of the Institute for Tibetan Plateau (ITP) Research (and much else besides!). For Tandong, it all began in 1978 when he was initially exposed to...
Belinda Medlyn on climate-carbon-vegetation interactions
The land biosphere takes up a big chunk of atmospheric CO2 emissions. But how, where, and for how long remains an area of, ahem, active research. Or put another way, there’s a lot we STILL don’t know about how increased CO2 will manifest, or not,
Sergey Gulev’s oceanographic odyssey
Sergey Gulev from Moscow State University grew up in the Soviet Union, forged a career as an oceanographer, and then witnessed the dissolution of much of what he and his colleagues had built. Gone were their four ocean-going ships,
Carl Wunsch and the rise of modern oceanography
Carl Wunsch is at the heart of many of the major advances in modern physical oceanography. The World Ocean Circulation Experiment, satellite altimetry, acoustic tomography, and Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean: all are hard to imagin...
Carolina Vera on the South American monsoon
Carolina Vera from the University of Buenos Aires tells Mike about her work on the South American monsoon. Relative to the Indian and Asian Monsoon, the South American Monsoon is understudied — but equally fascinating.
Into the tropics with Sarah Kang
Sarah Kang from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology tells Mike about her work to understand the atmospheric and oceanic dynamics that link the extratropics to the tropics. Paleoclimate research has long shown that climate perturbatio...
Jay Famiglietti on GRACE and global hydrology
Jay Famiglietti from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tells Mike about taking the plunge into using the GRACE gravity-measuring satellites for hydrology research. Keep in mind, this was at a time when hydrology was viewed as noise in the gravity signal...
Around the world with Maisa Rojas
Maisa Rojas from the University of Chile tells Mike about her work on regional climate modeling, paleoclimate, and the Southern Hemisphere westerlies. The story begins with Maisa’s birth in Chile, but quickly moves on to the family’s dramatic escape fr...