Climate Science seminars

Lisa Dang explores how observations reveal the three-dimensional atmospheres and climates of close-in exoplanets. Kepler and TESS have established a diverse population that tests theories of planetary formation and evolution. Tidally locked short-period planets offer strong atmospheric signals but their large day–night contrasts make one-dimensional interpretations inadequate. Measurements from JWST and precise ground-based observatories can expose these spatial differences and determine whether an atmosphere is present. The talk reviews discoveries about intensely irradiated planets and explains how the same observational techniques now investigate temperate rocky worlds and their potential habitability.

Jérôme Chave examines how tropical forests respond to warming and rising carbon dioxide. Their carbon uptake is constrained by physiology, ecological interactions and extreme conditions. Long-term field observations, analytical methods and models are used to investigate future carbon storage, biodiversity and the persistence of forest communities under global change.

David Obura draws on IPBES and other assessments to examine interconnected disruptions affecting biodiversity, climate, economies, societies and governance. The lecture asks how underlying drivers and potential tipping points relate to the international order and what constructive transformations could emerge from present crises. It considers differentiated responsibilities across countries and sectors, pathways that recognise ecosystems as foundations of human wellbeing, and ways to balance nature, economies and social outcomes. Existing multilateral institutions offer starting points, but changes in conservation priorities, finance and governance are needed to move towards safer and more equitable conditions.

Arctic landscapes are among the most vulnerable on Earth to climate change, largely due to the rapid degradation of permafrost. In steeper bedrock-dominated terrains, warming permafrost can lead to increased sediment production via mass wasting events and amplify the delivery of sediment to channels and lakes. However, there is a fundamental lack of data on current rates of sediment production and transport in Arctic watersheds, especially those still responding to post-glacial perturbations, making it impossible to predict the responses and rates of sediment transport processes under future climate change. In this talk, I will present findings from a field-based study of the Black Mountain catchment in the Aklavik Range (Canada). This site was chosen due to the presence of an alluvial fan that post-dates the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), providing a closed system where we can consider how both paraglacial and periglacial mass flow processes have influenced physical weathering and transport rates through time.

Mountain snow stores winter precipitation and releases water during the growing season, while also insulating soils and shaping alpine vegetation. This seminar examines how changing accumulation and melt affect mountain catchments and ecosystems, and how advances in satellite observation help quantify those changes and their hydrological and ecological consequences.

Earth-system models help explain how temperature and the water cycle have changed across geological and glacial timescales while remaining compatible with life. This seminar compares those natural changes with the current human-driven transformation of climate, examining why the pace and mechanisms of the Anthropocene differ from earlier changes.