February 12, 2025

Navigating Climate Challenges and Solutions feat. Sylvia Dee

28 minutes

With climate, the present is connected to both the past and the future. Historical data from paleoclimatology holds insights that can inform our understanding of future risks, and using AI in climate modeling may be the key to linking the two.

Sylvia Dee is an assistant professor and climate scientist at Rice University specializing in climate change and the past, present, and future of Earth’s hydrological cycle. Sylvia’s research focuses on how Earth’s modes of natural variability, like El Niño and La Niña events, compound with climate change to alter the characteristics of weather and climate extremes, such as flooding hazard on the Mississippi River. Her lab evaluates climate model data to understand future risks to human and natural systems.

David dives into Sylvia's background, her research on paleoclimatology, and the application of historical climate data to predict future climate scenarios. They also discuss the sources of carbon emissions, and extreme weather events like hurricanes and floods, and is a good discussion of the science behind the issues presented in an extremely accessible way.

Let us know you’re listening by filling out this form. We will be sending listeners Beyond the Hedges Swag every month.

Episode Guide:

01:31 Understanding Paleoclimatology
03:58 Historical Climate Changes and Human Impact
08:33 Climate Modeling and Predictions
12:43 The Role of AI in Climate Science
15:16 Impact of Carbon Emissions
19:02 Extreme Weather Events and Research Focus
22:09 Addressing Climate Change: Policy and Practice
24:39 Rapid Fire Questions and Conclusion

Beyond The Hedges is a production of Rice University and is produced by University FM.

Episode Quotes:

How Did Sylvia become interested in paleoclimate?

02:39: The reason I got really interested in studying paleoclimate is that right now, of course, we're changing the Earth's system so fast through human activities. And one of the ways we can deduce just how fast is by looking back into the past. And we can establish a baseline for what Earth does on its own, naturally, and compare that to the rate at which Earth's climate is changing now. So one of the major reasons we study paleoclimate is to contextualize current rates of climate and environmental change. And then there's a second reason to study paleoclimate, and that's that our climate models are, basically, built upon our observations from the 20th and the 21st centuries. And oftentimes, we're faced with the problem of the fact that data is pretty short compared to Earth's climate history. We only have about 100 or 150 years of data to validate our climate model physics against. And so looking into the past helps us create a new test for our climate model physics.

On using the past to predict our climate future

20:29: I have to say that undergraduates here at Rice have driven a lot of these research directions because I've let them lead and what they're excited about working on. So they'll learn about heat waves. They'll be here doing research in the summer, living through more and more hundred-degree days. And they want to work on it. They want to do research on that topic. And for us, since we're working with climate model data, it's nice to have a Ferrari at your fingertips. We can look at so many different types of problems, and the students can really sink their teeth into problems that they're interested in. [21:20] But I think the major difference between what I do and what other climate scientists do is that I do bring in this lens of the past. So trying to use the past to inform our future.

100 corporations drive 70% of emissions—not individuals

22:32: Approximately 100 corporations account for over 70 percent of emissions globally, and so there's been this effort, I think, within our society to shift the burden of blame onto the individual—oh, turn your heat down, recycle, etc., etc. But really, it's 100 corporations that account for 70 percent of emissions. So, for this to get better, we have to not only adapt to the changes, but we have to reduce carbon emissions. And that has to come from either the private sector doing that on its own or from government regulation. You see this working really well in places like the EU. They are certainly restricting the amount of carbon that different companies can emit, and they're putting caps on each country's emissions, for example, and that has caused technological innovation.

Show Links: