Experts: Climate change

Chanton is an acclaimed climate scientist who has done extensive work examining the causes of increased methane gas in the atmosphere.  He also has investigated the effects of the BP oil spill, including how methane-derived carbon from the spill entered the food web and how much sank to the ocean floor and mixed with sediment.

Doel, a historian of recent science, has explored how the physical environmental sciences in America rose to prominence in the twentieth century and beyond. He has examined how Pentagon advisors and White House leaders learned about emerging evidence of climate change from 1947 forward and how policymakers responded to these findings.

He also served as the project leader of a 9-member, 7-nation study initiated by the European Science Foundation BOREAS initiative, which led to a dedicated edition of the Journal of Historical Geography (April 2014, vol. 14) that yielded transnational insights into global Arctic developments.

Doel’s expertise on the history of science, the Cold War and the Arctic has been featured in The Washington Post.

Misra studies climate variability and predictability. He and his colleagues at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies developed a new metric called Track Integrated Kinetic Energy (TIKE) to measure seasonal Atlantic tropical cyclone activity. The metric focuses on the size of storms in addition to the duration and intensity, a measure that may prove important when considering a hurricane’s potential for death and destruction. He also is developing novel modeling projection strategies specifically aimed at developing tropical storm forecasts for Florida.

Robert Spencer is an assistant professor of oceanography at Florida State University and travels around the world conducting research on our natural resources to gauge the effects of climate change. He is an expert on climate change, the carbon cycle, dissolved organic matter, and the environments of the Arctic and the tropics.