Carbon. A matter of budget. Foresight Podcast Ep. 05
A trip among satellites, robots and bottles. One that oscillates between the heights of the atmosphere and the surface of the sea.
In this episode, we ride on carbon dioxide molecules to understand how relevant the word budget can be in delivering a future where a climate neutrality takes shape. An attainable horizon as long as we follow a simple little rule: “Don’t look at what they say. Look at what we’re doing”.
For Joellen Russell, the future is in our hands. This is a belief she matured on her journey that started as a child in a tiny fishing village in the Arctic Circle and led her to study the movements of the sea and atmosphere to the point of bringing the ocean into weather forecasting.
Oceanographer, climate scientist, and Professor at the University of Arizona Joellen Russell’s research combines models and observations to study and predict the ocean’s role in the climate and carbon cycle of the past, present and future. Russell has a vision for our sustainable future: we are already building it, and we will complete the job in a few decades. How? Follow us on this carbon trip to find out.
Foresight — Deep into the Future Planet, a podcast produced by the CMCC and FACTA.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcast or on your favorite podcast app.
Meet this episode’s guest
Joellen Russell is an oceanographer, climate scientist and distinguished professor at the University of Arizona. Her research uses robot floats, satellites, and supercomputers to observe and predict the ocean’s role in the climate and carbon cycle of the past, present and future.
Russell is one of the authors of the climate scientists’ amicus brief cited in the landmark 2007 Massachusetts vs the EPA Supreme Court decision that ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant covered under the Clean Air Act and must be regulated by the EPA.
Russell is also the lead for the modelling theme of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM), including its Southern Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (SOMIP), in active collaboration with colleagues at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (NOAA/GFDL).
Russell currently serves as Co-Chair of the NOAA Science Advisory Board’s Climate Working Group and on the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Community Earth System Model Advisory Board. She received her A.B. in Environmental Geoscience from Harvard and her PhD in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.
