Compelling Conversations — What is known and unknown about climate change

Climate change. It’s something we know a lot about — but what about the things climate scientists still don’t fully understand about the way the climate change works, and how it’s going to unfold as the century marches on? The more answers scientists find, the more questions they find, too. That’s just how science works, though, and it’s a feature of scientific research that paleoclimatologist Kathleen Johnson of the UCI Department of Earth System Science enjoys about the work her lab does: “I really love that aspect of discovery, where we can really learn more and more. The deeper we dig into paleoclimate, the more that we learn, and the more nuanced information that we can get,” she said during this episode of Compelling Conversations, alongside glaciologist Eric Rignot and climate scientist James Randerson. Grappling with the things we don’t know about climate change, and the myriad as-yet-unknown effects it will have on humanity and the rest of life on Earth, is going to be a need that amplifies as this century unfolds, and the task of mitigating the impacts of climate change will go hand-in-hand with just how detailed our knowledge of those impacts will be. So, pull up a chair, and join the conversation.

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