For the world to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” by mid-century, scientists say removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere will be essential. Dozens of companies have been created and billions of dollars spent already for carbon dioxide removal.  But another greenhouse gas getting a lot more attention for different reasons is methane. 

Methane is critical for many reasons.  The relative concentration of methane in the atmosphere has grown more than twice as fast as carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Removing methane from the atmosphere could mean reducing future temperatures even faster than just removing carbon dioxide alone because methane is about 81 times more potent in terms of warming the climate in its initial 20 years after its release. Tackling methane emissions could also be one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel producers. And removing Methane pollution from the atmosphere would improve air quality by decreasing the concentration near ground-level ozone  which causes an estimated one million premature deaths every year from respiratory illnesses.

Dr.  Jessica Swanson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Utah, has focused her research endeavors on the emerging science of atmospheric methane capture.  Her research group – the Swanson Group – has decades of experience modeling enzymes central to bioenergetic transformations and developing kinetic models of complex processes. In this episode Dr. Swanson talks about what it’s like to work in this exciting and quickly growing research and development space. 

Ricardo Rubio grew up in the borderlands region of southwestern Texas where he came to recognize the challenges and vulnerabilities that communities like his increasingly face because of the compounded effects of water scarcity, political disempowerment, infrastructure scarcity, and climate change. Rubio is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Utah and his research is part of a University of Utah College of Science SRI Stream, the Science Research Initiative, called “Big Data for Climate Science.” He is also a  Research Assistant under Dr. Sara Grineski at the Center for Natural and Technological Hazards at the University of Utah.  In this episode, Rubio talks about his work investigating social disparities in the face of climate change-related hazards and disasters, and what he is learning by documenting the water challenges impacting communities along the southern border and identifying possible solutions. 

Nicholas Witham, a fifth-year biomedical engineering Ph.D. student at the U, won first place in the Wilkes Student Innovation Prize competition in May 2023 for his proposal titled, "Renewable Energy And Carbon Capture With Thermomotive Biopolymer Textiles."  His idea proposes a novel renewable energy system that generates power through the daily heating and nightly cooling of the earth, known as the diurnal temperature variation. This can be accomplished using a type of artificial muscle known as a twisted coiled polymer actuator, which can be designed to either contract or expand when heated.

For this episode we are sharing an interview Nick Witham did with Chis Nelson on the U Rising Podcast, in which describes his winning idea as well as his efforts to create prosthetic limbs that affordable and accessible.

In continuing our conversations with the winners of the 2023 Wilkes Student Innovation Prize, we spoke with Samantha Eddy and Xiang Huo, whose proposal: “Decarbonize the Diné: A Prefabricated Solar-Driven Communal Solution with Passive Survivability,” won second prize.  It aims to turn Dennehotso, a Navajo chapter in Arizona, into a pilot project for building a self-sustained and eco-friendly living prototype for the Diné residents who live there.  Their proposed project would be a blueprint for improving the well-being of the Diné community through a holistic system of infrastructure and cultural solutions that would have net-zero carbon emissions. 

In continuation with the ⁠2023 Wilkes Student Innovation Prize⁠ winner interviews, Audri Dara, an undergraduate student in Material Science Engineer and Philosophy at the U, details her proposal on how increased student use of public transportation could help lower carbon emissions at the University of Utah. 

Ben Santer was an early contributor to the historic 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when a group of leading climate scientists first declared that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”.  Santer was a lead author of a key chapter of that report – chapter 8 – which ⁠Santer spoke about recently in a talk given at the University of Utah⁠. Santer has done a lot of groundbreaking work to identify human fingerprints in atmospheric temperature and water vapor, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature in hurricane formation regions, and many other climate variables.  In this episode, Santer shares four lessons he has learned in the course of his career as a climate scientist.

Steven Tran and Rabiul Hassan, PhD students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Utah took home the third place prize for the 2023 Wilkes Student Innovation Prize in May. Their proposal to help solve the issue of global climate change is a new organic carbon monitoring system for the soil. 

Kai Wilmot, a post-doc in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, studies what smoke plumes do to the atmosphere and how this can inform and improve air quality forecasting. He's currently pursuing development of a five-day smoke forecast for the Western U.S. using trajectory modeling, physics based wildfire plume rise forecasting and satellite based estimation of wildfire emissions. 

Dr. Kevin Perry has been studying air quality for over 20 years. Perry has monitored plumes from the World Trade Center collapse, smoke from pyrotechnic firework displays, and more recently he has been studying dust blowing off Great Salt Lake. He has deployed equipment to monitor ambient air from the ground, from ships, from the sky, and from high-altitude mountain observatories around the world. Perry recently explored 800 square miles of Great Salt Lake lakebed over 2 years, on his bicycle. This added to his previous work of trying to understand how mercury is transported in the air, and how bad air quality can impact birth outcomes. He served as chair of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the U. He currently teaches atmospheric sciences courses on air quality, health, and society.