Friday 6 March at 6.00pm, at the Presbyterian Community Centre, 91 Tenby Street, Wanaka.
Professor Greg Bodeker, Adjunct Professor at the Climate Change Research Institute.
Cost – $5 per person.
Climate change remains the defining issue of our time. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the latest
developments in climate science before diving into detail on a few of the climate change projects underway at Bodeker Scientific. These will include:
1) EWERAM: As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in Earth’s atmosphere, the resultant warming of the climate system changes the
nature of extreme weather events (EWEs). Every EWE has a contribution from natural variability as well as an anthropogenic contribution
resulting from climate change. Through this project our team is conducting the research necessary to develop an Extreme Weather Event
Real-time Attribution Machine (EWERAM) where, within a day or two of an EWE having occurred over New Zealand, and in response to media questions about the role of climate change in that event, rather than generic statements, scientifically defensible data will be available to inform quantitative statements about the role of climate change in both the severity and frequency of the event.
2) MAPM: Emissions of particulate matter (PM), reactive gases and greenhouse gases (GHGs) from industry, transport and domestic
activities, degrade air quality in cities. In New Zealand, it is primarily emissions of PM from burning wood or fossil fuels that are of
concern. Actions to mitigate PM and gaseous emissions require information on emissions sources, which have traditionally been
identified using bottom-up accounting exercises. Through this project we are developing a new approach to inferring PM emission maps at high spatial and temporal resolution that capitalizes on surface observations and a mesoscale atmospheric model enhanced to simulate aerosol microphysics. The system is called MAPM (Mapping Air Pollution eMissions).
3) Emergence: Through this project we are conducting pioneering research into understanding future extreme weather events (EWEs) and their
consequences. By understanding the changing frequency and severity of future EWEs, we will allow better societal adaptation. By tracing the
human fingerprint through EWE history and understanding its evolution in future, we will vastly improve understanding of future risk.
4) Plans for the future: Artificial Intelligence applications in Weather and Climate.
Greg Bodeker is the director of Bodeker Scientific (www.bodekerscientific.com), a small private research company operating
from New Zealand. Bodeker Scientific conducts fundamental research into atmospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change. Greg has a PhD in Physics from the University of Natal in South Africa, and worked for the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) for a little over 15 years before leaving in 2009 to start Bodeker Scientific. He is the director of Kentron
(www.kentron.co.nz) and an adjunct professor at Victoria University.
