Climate and environmental scientists are vital to the future of our civilization. After all, they dedicate themselves to studying the planet we call home to solve climate problems despite the criticism they face.
We pulled five of the most impressive environmental scientists from our recent list of groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world.
From a glaciologist who studies the melting West Antarctic Ice Sheet to an activist who battles politicians' "quick fixes" to climate change, here are five environmental scientists who are working to help remedy the worst problems our planet faces.
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Eric Rignot is drawing public attention to the irreversible impacts of climate change.
Glaciologist Eric Rignot used satellite-radar observations to conclude that the West Antarctic glacier is quickly melting, and that there's no way to reverse it. For his remarkable 2014 study, Rignot and a team of researchers looked at the five Amundsen Sea glaciers in West Antarctica, mapping the bedrock under the ice. Because there's no ridge holding the ice in place, nothing exists to help slow the ice sheet's inevitable collapse. "Ice is going to retreat from this sector for decades and centuries to come, and we can't stop it,"Rignot told Nature.
Rignot recently coauthored an alarming study, led by NASA's former lead climate scientist James Hansen, that concludes that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates, resulting in a sea-level rise of at least 10 feet in as little as 50 years.
Rignot is a professor at the University of California at Irvine.
Gavin A. Schmidt is pinpointing the roots of climate change.
Climate is affected by tons of different variables, including tiny, uncontrollable shifts in our oceans to the massive amounts of greenhouse gases humans are adding to the atmosphere. As the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), Gavin A. Schmidt develops detailed climate models that illustrate the effects of each of these factors. In 2009, he and photographer Joshua Wolfe coauthored "Climate Change: Picturing the Science" to show how climate change is changing the face of the planet.
Schmidt is the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and principal investigator for the GISS ModelE Earth System Model.
Ian Joughin made a stunning discovery about the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
The Thwaites Glacier will inevitably collapse in less than a few hundred years, raising sea levels by about 2 feet total all on its own. The Thwaites holds the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet together, and its loss means the inevitable loss of the entire sheet, the researchers said.
That will cause sea levels to rise up to 13 feet when it melts completely. Glaciologist Ian Joughin and his team were able to model the glacier’s deterioration over the last 18 years, and used that data to predict how the melting will look in coming decades.
Joughin is an affiliate professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington.
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