Climate, Energy & Sustainability

CU-Boulder Climate and Energy Faculty Experts

Climate Change and Environmental Research

Bradley H. Udall

The Western Water Assessment is one of eight NOAA-funded Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments designed to connect climate science with decision making. Udall’s expertise includes water and policy issues of the American West and especially the Colorado River. Water is critical for all aspects of human society including food production, power generation, human health, industry and recreation. The Western Water Assessment’s focus on this precious substance ties us directly to human concerns. Udall has worked closely with water providers who rely on the river like Denver Water, Aurora, Colorado Springs and Bureau of Reclamation to provide climate education and outreach, synthesis of all applicable research, as well as new research on topics like tree-ring reconstructions of streamflow, seasonal forecasts, and climate change assessments.

Pieter Tans

Pieter Tans has been actively interested in mankind's influence on climate since 1972, after reading "Inadvertent Climate Modification", a Report of the Study of Man's Impact on Climate. He did a postdoc with Dave Keeling at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1978, and subsequently worked for six years at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on high-energy accelerator measurements of carbon-14 and high-precision measurements of atmospheric oxygen (O2). Since 1985 he has led the Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory. He is a leader in the interpretation of isotopic ratios to diagnose biogeochemical cycles of greenhouse gases. For several decades, the group has maintained a cooperative global atmospheric observing network producing the most widely used data of atmospheric CO2, methane (Ch5), carbon monoxide (CO), and several other greenhouse gases and supporting measurements. He discovered the existence of a very large “sink” (uptake) of CO2 by terrestrial ecosystems at mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, partially offsetting the emissions caused by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. In March 2007 his group launched CarbonTracker, a data assimilation system that turns global observations of atmospheric CO2 concentrations into time-varying maps of surface sources and sinks of CO2 that are optimally consistent with the observations.

Roger Pielke, Jr.

Roger Pielke’s current areas of interest include understanding the relations of science and politics, technology policy in the atmospheric and related sciences, use and value of prediction in decision-making, and policy education for scientists. Pielke’s work focuses on the connection of science and decision-making and how we can improve that connection.

John Wahr

John Wahr uses models and data of various types to try to better understand the Earth's interior, the ice sheets, and the hydrological cycle. By obtaining improved and continuing information about how the ice sheets are presently losing mass, Wahr hopes to help the scientific community better understand the factors that determine the ice sheets' response to climate change, and thus to improve predictions of how that response might evolve in the future.

Ted Scambos

Ted Scambos is a glaciologist and remote sensing specialist. Most of his work concerns the effects of climate change on Earth's two large ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica. Using satellite data, he’s been able to track how the ice shelves of Antarctica have disintegrated as climate has warmed, and then followed how nearby glaciers have sped up once these fringing ice plates have been removed. He has also been to these areas to study the features up close; nine field expeditions to Antarctica, one visit to Greenland, and even a few research trips up to Boulder's local glacier near the Continental Divide.

Elizabeth Weatherhead

Betsy Weatherhead is an atmospheric scientist specializing in climate change and its effects.
She was a lead author on several major climate change assessments including the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. She actively collaborates with researchers on a broad range of topics to understand changes in the environment. She has worked on understanding trends in ozone, temperature, precipitation, solar radiation and aerosols.

Konrad Steffen

• Maintains the 22 automatic weather stations of the Greenland Climate Network
• Monitors surface melt area of the Greenland Ice Sheet using satellites
• Investigates surface radiation and energy balance
• Investigates the role of moulins in draining meltwater through the Greenland Ice Sheet
• Investigates the influence of climate on the ice dynamics (flow speed) of the Greenland Ice Sheet

The Steffen Research Group participated in one of the first studies that suggested that outlet glacier speed can change rapidly and is currently investigating the interactions between climate and ice dynamics on a variety of spatial scales. The Steffen Research Group also maintains active links with a variety of policymakers and government representatives who request the latest information on the Greenland Ice Sheet to make informed decisions.

Steve Nerem

Steve Nerem is a specialist in measuring sea level change using space-based geodetic techniques. He monitors the height of the ocean surface using space-based radar altimeters. He also uses satellite gravity measurements to monitor the water-mass variations in the polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers, and how they affect the ocean water mass. He is a member of the Science Teams for the Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellite altimeter missions, as well as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiments (GRACE) satellite gravity mission. Satellites measurements provide a global perspective of climate change that is important if one is to identify the human component of the change from natural variations.

Mark C. Serreze

Mark Serreze is a climate scientist, with a particular interest in the Arctic. He fell in love with the Arctic after his first visit to the region as a young graduate student in 1982. The Arctic has long been theorized as a bellwether of the climate system - a region where the effects of rising atmospheric greenhouse gases would be seen early on and would be particularly pronounced. As Serreze's work has helped to demonstrate, theory and observations are coming into line. The anticipated rapid changes in the Arctic are now upon us.

Jim White

Professor White’s research has helped to show that large climate changes tend to occur in the natural system as abrupt and rapid shifts in mode probably driven by internal adjustments in the Earth climate system, rather than slow and gradual adjustments to changing external conditions, such as the amount of energy received from the sun. His research has also helped to show that land plants are capable of removing large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, amounts that equal our input of CO2 from fossil fuel burning on short time scales. Such large changes in the uptake of CO2 by plants is a key piece in the puzzle we must solve to address future CO2 levels and climate change.

Alan Townsend

Alan Townsend researches carbon and nitrogen dynamics at regional to global scales, phosphorus controls over carbon and nitrogen in moist tropical systems, and the effects of nitrogen deposition in the Colorado alpine. Among other efforts, he is currently working on a NASA-funded project to look at carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycling in primary forests, successively older pastures, and secondary forests in the Tapajos region of the Amazon.

Diane McKnight

Professor McKnight’s research focuses on interactions between hydrologic, chemical, and biological processes in controlling the dynamics in aquatic ecosystems. This research is carried out through field-scale experiments, modeling, and laboratory characterization of natural substrates. In addition, McKnight conducts research focusing on interactions between freshwater biota, trace metals, and natural organic material in diverse freshwater environments, including lakes and streams in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica. She also develops interactions with state and local groups involved in mine drainage and watershed issues in the Rocky Mountains.

Gifford Miller

Miller’s primary interest is gaining an improved understanding of how the physical earth system operates. Toward this end, he is specifically interested in using the Quaternary (the geologic time period roughly 1.8 million years ago to the present) as a means to reconstruct the coupled ocean/atmospheric/ice climate system. By reconstructing past environmental changes it is possible to get a better understanding of the rates and magnitude of natural climate variability, and the various feedback mechanisms in the global climate system. He is also interested in the role of humans in the modification of landscapes and ecosystem on Quaternary timescales.

Jason Neff

Professor Neff focuses on a broad range of research topics in a range of different ecosystems. The thread that runs through all of his studies is a goal of understanding how the earth is changing and how humans interact with natural ecosystems. Sometimes those studies focus on basic ecological processes, and at other times, the work is directed toward issues—such as carbon cycle and dust research—that have broad significance to society.

Sharon Collinge

Professor Collinge’s work emphasizes understanding the ecological consequences of human-induced changes to natural systems. Her research centers on the impacts of habitat loss, fragmentation, and restoration on the persistence of native species, focusing specifically on the impacts of landscape alteration on disease dynamics in prairie dogs and the use of ecological theory to guide efforts to restore vernal pool ecosystems that have been degraded by human activities. Professor Collinge is particularly interested in the interface between environmental science and policy regarding endangered species and habitat protection. 

Energy Research

University Energy Collaboration

Carl Koval

As Director of the CU-Boulder Energy Initiative, Professor Koval can comment on CU-Boulder’s campus-wide energy research efforts, as well as the university’s contributions to the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory. Koval’s technical expertise is in the areas of solar energy conversion (photoelectrochemistry and photocatalysis) and, in collaboration with Professor Richard Noble, energy-efficient industrial processes.

Stein Sture

Stein Sture is deeply involved in the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, CU-Boulder’s federal laboratory relationships (NOAA, NREL, NIST, and others), the developing CU relationship with Conoco Phillips, and the contributions CU-Boulder is making to the Colorado economy in the areas of renewable energy, biotechnology, aerospace, and tourism.

Paul Komor

Paul Komor is actively involved in CU-Boulder’s workforce development and education associated with the “New Energy Economy.” He is also very knowledgeable about policy issues related to renewable versus traditional energy use, with policy experience in the nation’s capitol.

Energy Research Innovation

Al Weimer

Professor Wiemer is an expert in all areas of biofuels and also conversion of biomass to other useful compounds, with numerous patents and and is the co-founder of Copernican Energy Inc., a Boulder, Colorado-based biofuels company.

Lucy Pao

Wind energy is the fastest-growing energy source in the world, with worldwide wind-generation capacity tripling in the five years leading up to 2004. Because wind turbines are large, flexible structures operating in noisy environments, they present a myriad of control problems that, if solved, could reduce the cost of wind energy. Professor Pao has been investigating novel ways of controlling variable-speed wind turbines.

Josef Michl

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Michl has developed a new class of fluorinated materials for use in batteries and related devices. Professor Michl's group works in physical organic chemistry, a combination of synthesis of organic and organometallic (both main group and transition metal) compounds with an investigation of their properties by physical, mechanistic, and computational methods. This ranges from photochemical reactions to nanoscience. The new carborane and related structures involve some of the strongest acids and strongest oxidants known. Michl’s group is attempting to prepare bulk species otherwise known only in the gas phase. This is very fundamental science but it also has some immediate applications for polymer lithium battery electrolytes and fuel cell membranes.

David Jonas

Professor Jonas is nationally known for developing two-dimensional femptosecond spectroscopy, which is being used to understand the solar energy conversion potential of quantum dot arrays (in collaboration with researchers at NREL).

Energy Law and Policy

Lakshman Guruswamy

Professor Guruswamy can speak to the public policy of many aspects of energy/climate, but his main focus is international treaties and policies that effect energy. As Director of CEES, he has recently looked at what the next president can accomplish in the energy arena through executive orders.