Mark Lawrence, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam
Monday, 4 July 2016 at 15:00 in the Large Operon, EMBL Heidelberg
Mark Lawrence, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam
Climate Engineering: approaches, uncertainties, and risks
Abstract
Our climate is changing – that much is certain. What can we do about it? Reducing our overall CO2 emissions will take time, and implementing adaptation measures will be difficult and costly. This has raised the question of whether it might somehow be possible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Or, if the combination of this and reduced emissions proved insufficient, whether we could cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space. Technical interventions of this kind in the climate system have come to be known under the umbrella terms of “Climate Engineering” and “Geoengineering”. But could they actually work? Or would their application lead to new problems? This lecture will review the opportunities, uncertainties and risks associated with these proposals to combat climate change.
Biography
Prof. Dr. Mark Lawrence is Managing Scientific Director at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS). His research focuses are the impacts and mitigation of short-lived, climate-forcing pollutants (SLCPs), particularly in the face of global urbanization, and on the potential impacts, uncertainties and risks of “climate engineering”.
Prof. Dr. Lawrence received his Ph.D. in 1996 in Earth and Atmospheric Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, (USA). His Ph.D. research was mainly conducted at the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz.
From 2000 until 2005, he led an independent junior research group at MPIC, and in 2006 he took over the atmospheric modelling group at MPIC. He received his Habilitation in 2006 at the University of Mainz, where he also served as interim professor for meteorology during 2009-2010, winning the 2010 annual Teaching Award from the State of Rheinland-Pfalz, as well as a University Teaching Award. In 2014 he became an Honorary Professor at the University of Potsdam.
Prof. Dr. Lawrence is author or co-author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He co-coordinated the EU project “MEGAPOLI” (2008-2011) and coordinated the project “EuTRACE” (European Transdisciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering, 2012-2014). Dr. Lawrence has served as editor for the journals Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and Atmospheric Environment, and has served or serves on various international committees, most notably the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry project (IGAC, for which he is co-chair from 2015-2017), the Science Team of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Clouds project (ABC), and the Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (CACGP), as well as being a contributing author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth Assessment Report.