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April 16, 2008

Climate scientist Benjamin Santer to speak at UCSC on Thursday, May 8

By Tim Stephens (831) 459-2495; stephens@ucsc.edu

Benjamin Santer, one of the world's leading scientists in the identification of human-caused climate change, will deliver the fourth annual Fred Keeley Lecture on Environmental Policy on Thursday, May 8, at 7:30 p.m. in the Media Theater at UC Santa Cruz.

Santer's talk is entitled "Climate Fingerprints: How do we know human activities have influenced global climate change?" Sponsored by the STEPS Institute for Innovation in Environmental Research, this event is free and open to the public.

Santer has been a key contributor to the Scientific Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Santer's research focuses on such topics as climate model evaluation and identification of natural and anthropogenic "fingerprints" in observed climate records.

"Ben Santer made seminal contributions to the Nobel Prize–winning work of the IPCC," said Susan Solomon, cochair of the IPCC Working Group-1. "In particular, he was the key scientific leader in the pioneering statement of the second assessment report that there was a discernible human influence on climate. Since then, he has continued to contribute to the field and to IPCC, and there can be little doubt that the 2007 IPCC statement--that it can now be said it is very likely most of the warming of the past 50 years is attributable to greenhouse gases--owes much to the remarkable scientific work of Ben Santer."

Santer holds a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of East Anglia, England. After working to develop "climate fingerprinting" methods at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, he joined the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Recognition and awards for his work in climate-change detection include a Distinguished Scientist Fellowship from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2005, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award in 2002, and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998.

During his visit to UCSC, Santer will also be participating in a roundtable discussion with campus and community leaders on "Climate solutions: Let's get going--but where and how?"

This UCSC lecture series is named in honor of Fred Keeley, a civic leader and former member of the State Assembly, who for many years has contributed to shaping environmental policy in California.

A map, parking instructions, and information about the lecture are available on the STEPS web site. For more information, please contact STEPS program coordinator Abby Young at steps@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-1310.

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