Oak Ridge Today

ORNL scientist to lead project studying permafrost thaw, climate processes in Alaska

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Colleen Iversen (Photo submitted by ORNL)

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Colleen Iversen—ecosystem ecologist, group leader, and distinguished staff scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory—has been named director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments Arctic, or NGEE Arctic. That is a multi-institutional project studying permafrost thaw and other climate-related processes in Alaska, a press release said.

Iversen has worked as a scientist on NGEE Arctic since 2012 and served as its deputy director from 2021-2023. She also leads a research team in the Plant-Soil Interactions Group at ORNL. Iversen succeeds Stan Wullschleger, founding director of NGEE Arctic, who retired as associate laboratory director for Biological and Environmental Systems Science at ORNL in April 2023.

Iversen, who took on the role of director and principal investigator for NGEE Arctic earlier this year, is excited about taking the reins of such a large, multidisciplinary project, the press release said.

[Read more…]

ORNL’s Salil Mahajan: Gaining perspective on climate variability with high-resolution modeling

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Computational climate scientist Salil Mahajan simulates the complex and chaotic aspects of climate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

Computational climate scientist Salil Mahajan simulates the complex and chaotic aspects of climate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. (Photo by ORNL/U.S. Department of Energy)

 

By Ashley C. Huff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Simulating the global climate in high resolution at multiple scales will help answer questions about future global and regional climates. However, as performance expectations increase for Earth system models, so do computing challenges.

Salil Mahajan, a computational climate scientist in the Computational Earth Sciences group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is tackling some of these challenges in high-performance computing for climate science.

Climate is a chaotic system. It includes complex interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, sea ice, and land.

“As we include more dynamic, coupled interactions among these spheres and incorporate more biological, chemical, and physical processes in our models, the computations become more complicated,” Mahajan said. “We have to take a step-by-step approach to understand cause and effect and ensure that our simulations are accurately representing our observational measurements.”

Model validation and verification are now the bread and butter of his daily routine. But Mahajan’s affinity for atmospheric science and computing architectures developed along a circuitous route.

From architecture to atmosphere [Read more…]

Lunch today: ORNL Climate Change Science Institute, impact of climate on society

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Melissa-Allen

Melissa R. Allen, post-doctoral research associate, Computational Science and Engineering Division at ORNL (Submitted photo)

Joseph Kennedy and Melissa Allen of Oak Ridge National Laboratory will discus the lab’s Climate Change Science Institute and the impact of climate on society during a lunchtime meeting today (Tuesday, February 16).

Kennedy and Allen will be the guest speakers at the Lunch with the League. Kennedy is a postdoctoral research associate and computational glaciologist at the Institute. Allen is a post-doctoral research associate in the Computational Science and Engineering Division. 

Presented by the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge, the program will be held at 11:45 a.m. Tuesday in  the Social Hall of the Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, located at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike. The public is invited, and no reservations are necessary. Lunches are provided on a first-come basis for $8 or you may bring your own. Coffee and tea are provided.

Also at the meeting, there will be a formal announcement and details of an ORNL CCSI and a League partnership on climate change issues, a press release said. League member Chris Iversen, who leads the climate change action group for the LWVOR, has been working extensively with ORNL to develop this partnership. ORNL is already working with the city of Knoxville on similar partnership. [Read more…]

DOE event marks beginning of landmark ecosystem experiment

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Carbon Dioxide Test Chambers

By controlling the temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide in the test chambers, scientists hope to learn how microbial communities, moss populations, various higher plant types, and some insect groups respond. (Photo by ORNL)

 

GRAND RAPIDS, Minn.—Scientists are getting a glimpse of the future with a U.S. Department of Energy large-scale experiment designed to answer questions about how carbon-rich peatlands will respond to projected warming of the climate and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

SPRUCE, which stands for Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Climatic and Environmental Change, was launched Wednesday, August 26, at the experiment site about 25 miles north of Grand Rapids. Among those attending the ceremony were Gary Geernaert and Daniel Stover of DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research; Thomas Schmidt, assistant director for research, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Northern Research Station; and Martin Keller, associate laboratory director of Energy and Environmental Sciences at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

The site consists of about seven acres of raised bog in the peatlands of the Chippewa National Forest. The natural spruce bog in northern Minnesota contains more than 10,000 years of carbon accumulated from peatlands and answers to questions related to the predicted warming of ecosystems. [Read more…]

ORNL part of project to study how tropical forests respond to climate change

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Amazon Tropical Rainforests

The future of tropical rainforests in the Amazon (pictured) and worldwide is the focus of a new research project that combines field experiments and predictive modeling. (Photo courtesy ORNL)

 

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory will play key roles in an expansive new project that aims to bring the future of tropical forests and the climate system into much clearer focus by coupling field research with the development of a new ecosystem model.

The project is called the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics, or NGEE-Tropics. Its goal is the development of a model that represents how tropical forests interact with Earth’s climate in much greater ecological detail than ever before. This will help scientists explore, more accurately than is possible today, how rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, increasing greenhouse gas levels, and other natural and human-induced changes affect tropical forests’ influence on Earth’s climate.

Led by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the effort includes collaborators from Oak Ridge, Brookhaven, Los Alamos, and Pacific Northwest national laboratories. The study also includes researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA, and several institutions from other nations. [Read more…]

Energy policy professor, former ORNL manager to discuss sustainable energy

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Marilyn Brown

Marilyn Brown

The 17th Annual Dick Smyser Community Lecture Series opens on Thursday, June 26, featuring Professor Marilyn Brown, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Lab in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The title of her June 26 lecture is “Technologies and Policies for a Sustainable Energy Future.” It’s sponsored by Friends of ORNL. The event is free of charge and will be held at the American Museum of Science and Energy at 300 S. Tulane Ave. in Oak Ridge.

Before moving to Georgia Tech in 2006, Brown managed the Efficiency, Renewables, and Electric Grid Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She is also a board member of the Tennessee Valley Authority. [Read more…]

‘One Earth, Our Choice’ concert, rally features ORNL scientist, Al Gore show

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One Earth Our Choice

A free concert and rally in Knoxville at noon Saturday features Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Virginia Dale, right, and a new “Climate Reality” show by Al Gore. (Submitted image)

A free “One Earth, Our Choice” concert and rally today (Saturday) features an Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist who will discuss Tennessee’s changing climate and a presentation of Al Gore’s new show, “The Climate Reality Project.”

The concert and rally for climate action starts at noon at SEEED at 1617 Dandridge Ave. in Knoxville, a press release said.

It’s part of a weekend of events that includes climate activist Bill McKibben speaking at Oak Ridge High School on Sunday and at Thompson-Boling Arena on Monday. Organizers called it an “attention-getting weekend for climate action.” Those involved in today’s concert and rally include Secret City Sustainability, a student-led initiative in Oak Ridge.

[Read more…]

UT study predicts extreme climate in eastern United States

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From extreme drought to super storms, many wonder what the future holds for the climate of the eastern United States. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville does away with the guessing.

Results show the region will be hotter and wetter.

Joshua Fu, a civil and environmental engineering professor, and Yang Gao, a graduate research assistant, developed precise scales of cities that act as a climate crystal ball, seeing high-resolution climate changes almost 50 years into the future.

The study found that heat waves will become more severe in most regions of the eastern United States and that both the Northeast and Southeast will see a drastic increase in precipitation.

[Read more…]