By Kyra Brown
During the first semester of this academic year, American climate scientist and professor in the School of Sciences of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Kim Cobb, visited students of New York University’s D.C campus to speak about her findings on the impending implications she believes climate change is having on our oceans and environment.
Cobb’s research utilizes the study of corals and cave stalagmites to reconstruct the effects of changes in tropical Pacific temperature and rainfall patterns over the last decades to millennia.
“What we’re seeing in the last 50 years is outside any natural variability.”
Cobb relayed to students that scientists have suspected an apparent cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and El Niño, which is a natural weather cycle that has heated and cooled the equatorial Pacific ocean for many thousands of years, in turn causing large-scale weather irregularities.
However, according to Cobb, there may be hope in reducing the cause of these climate changes.
Her goal for the coming years was to save at least 1 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, she has since surpassed this goal with the help of her students and donors of her community,
Reducing all of society’s carbon footprint seems like a nearly impossible task, however, Cobb says that even the smallest of efforts made by many people could produce great change. She has already taken it upon herself to pursue the challenge.
Cobb now walks or bikes to work and minimizes her need for long-distance travel. She has centered her lifestyle around her avoidance of carbon emissions and urges people of this generation and future generations to do the same.
Image Sources:
https://www.berkshireeagle.com/uploads/original/20190206-185427-kim_cobb_002-T5_05926.jpg
http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~kcobb/people/images/2018_group.png
https://live.staticflickr.com/8664/16561142711_bc0b6bd809_n.jpg
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