Carbon-Climate Interactions:
A Contemporary View

Inez Fung

Professor of Earth and Planetary Science
Director of the Center for Atmospheric Science
University of California, Berkeley

CO2 and climate have co-evolved through Earth's history. Variations in atmospheric CO2 are often invoked to explain past climate change. Here we use recent observations as well as results from the NCAR Community Climate Model with interactive carbon dynamics to explore how natural climate variations may modulate carbon exchange processes of the terrestrial biosphere and of the ocean, and, in turn, the atmospheric CO2 abundance. We emphasize the observations needed to advance predictive understanding of the carbon cycle and climate.

About the Lecturer

Inez Fung is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor for the Physical Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is the Director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center. She received her S.B. in Applied Mathematics, and Sc.D. in Meteorology from MIT. Her thesis was on the organization of rainbands in hurricanes. Since then, her research focus has slowly evolved from earth's climate and climate change to the cycles of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the principal agents of climate change.

More Information

http://www.atmos.berkeley.edu/~inez/

Inez Fung