This is What It’s Like To Be a Young Climate Scientist

Data from ship logs, military records and satellites
show 100 years of Arctic sea ice minimums.

This year is proving to be a momentous one for the climate. There have been both wildly depressing and wildly hopeful milestones.

On the downside, carbon dioxide passed the symbolic 400 parts per million threshold permanently (in our lifetimes anyways), the planet is going to have its hottest year on record for the third year in a row and a rash of extreme weather events shook the world this summer. More positively, the Paris Agreement was ratified, a new treaty was put in place to ban a potent greenhouse gas and renewable energy continues to surge.

It’s an interesting time to be alive, but perhaps an even more interesting time to join the climate science field. We’re at a crucial turning point for both the field and humanity.

Scientists entering the field now are standing on the shoulders of more than 150 years of climate change research. Our scientific knowledge of climate change has expanded tremendously since John Tyndall’s work on greenhouse gases starting in the 1850s (and even since James Hansen’s 1988 testimony before Congress for that matter).

Read Brian Khan’s story on Climate Central story - “This is What It’s Like To Be a Young Climate Scientist.”