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A list of talks related to sustainability and the environment
URL: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/22840
Updated: 1 hour 58 min ago

Mon 17 Feb 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Fri, 17/01/2025 - 11:38
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Fri 14 Feb 17:30: Epigenetics: A Code upon a Code?

Fri, 17/01/2025 - 07:28
Epigenetics: A Code upon a Code?

Biography

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith is the Executive Chair of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Before this appointment she served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and International Partnerships) at the University of Cambridge. A renowned mammalian developmental geneticist, genome biologist and epigeneticist, Professor Ferguson-Smith is the Balfour Professor of Genetics in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Genetics where she served as Head of Department from 2013-2020. She is also a Fellow of Darwin College.

At the University of Cambridge, Professor Ferguson-Smith leads a research group comprised of experimental and computational scientists. They focus on the epigenetic control of genome function, particularly on models of epigenetic inheritance with implications for health and disease. Committed to the training and professional development of new talent, her team’s current work includes investigating how genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors influence cellular and developmental processes.

In 2017, Anne was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 2021 received their Buchanan Medal for her pioneering work on epigenetics. In 2023, she was named Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for her research contributions.

Photo – Dasha Tenditna

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Thu 23 Jan 11:30: TBC

Thu, 16/01/2025 - 11:52
TBC

Abstract not available

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Thu 30 Jan 11:30: Multiphase Transport Phenomena and Energy Process Intensification

Thu, 16/01/2025 - 11:42
Multiphase Transport Phenomena and Energy Process Intensification

This talk will cover the following three aspects –

Micron-particle laden flow and heat transfer in confined geometry with separation-enhanced hydrogen production and carbon capture as an example.

Rheological behaviour and heat transfer of dilute suspensions of nanoparticles with cooling of high-power microelectronics as an example.

Microstructures and behaviour of thermal energy storage materials with composite phase change materials and composite thermochemical materials as examples.

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Mon 17 Mar 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 15/01/2025 - 14:59
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 10 Mar 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 15/01/2025 - 14:56
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 03 Mar 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 15/01/2025 - 14:55
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 24 Feb 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 15/01/2025 - 14:55
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 10 Feb 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 15/01/2025 - 14:54
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 03 Feb 13:00: Title to be confirmed

Wed, 15/01/2025 - 14:53
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Tue 18 Mar 11:00: An alkaline world: a new assessment of the global chemical climate for PM2.5 formation and nitrogen and sulphur deposition

Tue, 14/01/2025 - 16:23
An alkaline world: a new assessment of the global chemical climate for PM2.5 formation and nitrogen and sulphur deposition

The reduction of atmospheric reactive nitrogen (Nr) and sulfur (Sr) species is a key objective for air quality control policies as they contribute to the formation of PM2 .5, which has significant effects on human health and climate, and their deposition affects ecosystem productivity. The chemical climate for Nr and Sr pollution has undergone dramatic changes in the past two decades. Therefore, it is necessary to update our understanding of global Nr and Sr chemistry and investigate their mitigation under current atmospheric conditions. Since a range of emission sources and atmospheric chemical and physical processes contribute to Nr and Sr concentrations, atmospheric chemistry transport models (ACTMs) are essential tools to identify the key processes controlling their impacts and effective mitigation. In this talk, I will present my research on global modelling of Nr and Sr species using the EMEP MSC -W ACTM coupled with WRF meteorology. Firstly, I will introduce the model-measurement comparisons of reduced nitrogen (RDN), oxidized nitrogen (OXN), and oxidized sulfur (OXS) species covering 10 monitoring networks worldwide that measure surface concentrations and wet deposition. Secondly, I will summarize our global analysis of current Nr and Sr gas-aerosol partitioning and regional budgets. This analysis quantitatively demonstrates that successful control of SO2  and NOx emissions has resulted in atmospheric NH3  excess in many areas, leading to a new significance of alkaline air, with adverse impacts on ecosystems. Finally, I will present our work that quantifies the sensitivities of emissions reductions for mitigating PM2 .5 and N and S deposition. This work highlights a global picture of the effectiveness of NH3 , NOx, and SOx emissions reductions for mitigating both concentrations and deposition of Nr and Sr pollutants.

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Mon 27 Jan 13:00: Climate policy: why is it needed and how to make it work

Tue, 14/01/2025 - 16:08
Climate policy: why is it needed and how to make it work

Abstract not available

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Tue 04 Feb 11:00: Could stratospheric aerosol injection produce meaningful global cooling without novel aircraft?

Tue, 14/01/2025 - 14:37
Could stratospheric aerosol injection produce meaningful global cooling without novel aircraft?

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) is a proposed method of cooling the planet and reducing the impacts of climate change by adding a layer of small particles to the high atmosphere where they would reflect a fraction of incoming sunlight. While it is likely that SAI could reduce global temperature, it has many serious risks and would not perfectly offset climate change. For SAI to be effective, injection would need to take place in the stratosphere. The height of the transition to the stratosphere decreases with latitude, from around 17km near the equator to 8km near the poles. The required injection height would therefore also decrease for higher latitude injection. In this talk, I will present simulations of SAI in an earth system model, UKESM , which quantify how impacts would vary with the injection location and timing, focusing on low-altitude high-latitude injection strategies. Our results suggest that SAI could meaningfully cool the planet even if limited to using existing large jets and injecting at around 13km altitude, if this injection is in the high latitudes during spring and summer. However, relative to a more optimal deployment with novel aircraft at 20km, this strategy requires three times more sulphur dioxide injection and so would strongly increase some side-effects.

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Wed 05 Mar 17:30: Breaking the Ice: Abrupt climate change and deglaciation

Tue, 14/01/2025 - 04:08
Breaking the Ice: Abrupt climate change and deglaciation

The past glacial period and ensuing deglaciation were punctuated by multiple episodes of abrupt climate change. Despite decades of research, the causes of the rapid changes remain largely unknown, and, crucially, they are very difficult to reproduce with Earth System Models. In this seminar, I will present a series of recent and brand new climate model experiments for the last deglaciation, exploring the climate-ice-ocean interactions that trigger major abrupt changes in, for example, ocean circulation, surface temperature, ice volume and sea level. I will conclude the presentation with some of our work-in-progress using uncertainty quantification to produce the best and most rigorous models of climate change.

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Wed 29 Jan 14:00: Modelling sea ice dynamics using brittle dynamics: impact in pack ice and marginal ice zones

Mon, 13/01/2025 - 16:16
Modelling sea ice dynamics using brittle dynamics: impact in pack ice and marginal ice zones

Sea ice dynamics are highly complex and generally poorly resolved by sea ice models. This is problematic, as they modulate the amount of momentum exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean in polar regions, as well as play a key role in heat and light fluxes through the opening/closing of sea ice leads. A solution to improve simulated sea ice dynamics is to use a brittle rheology to represent the mechanical behaviour of sea ice. Such rheology is included in the sea ice model neXtSIM, and we demonstrated its ability to capture the observed characteristics and complexity of fine-scale sea ice deformations.Here, we present two cases where we coupled this sea ice model to better understand the role of ice dynamics in ice-ocean interactions.

In the first case, we set up a 12km resolution ocean—sea-ice coupled model, using OPA , the ocean component of NEMO . We investigate the sea ice mass balance of the model for the period 2000-2018. We estimate the contribution of leads and polynyas to winter ice production. We find this contribution to add up from 25% to 35% of the total ice growth in pack ice in winter, showing a significant increase over the 18 years covered by the model simulation.

In the second case, we focus on the marginal ice zone (MIZ) and couple neXtSIM with the wave model WAVEWATCH III . We investigate how wave-induced breakup impacts sea ice dynamics in the MIZ . We show how, using the “damage” quantity that is at the core of the brittle rheology framework, we can represent the loss of ice strength associated with wave-induced breakup, and how breakup can increase the mobility of the thickest ice in the MIZ after storms. For both cases, we will also discuss briefly how using a brittle sea ice model could impact the modelling of Antarctic sea ice using preliminary results from a new configuration.

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Mon 27 Jan 19:30: CSAR lecture: Electric Jet Engines and Cricket Ball Swing

Mon, 13/01/2025 - 10:52
CSAR lecture: Electric Jet Engines and Cricket Ball Swing

How research at the Whittle Laboratory is helping to deliver zero emission flight and uncover the mysteries of cricket ball swing.

For the last 50 years, the Whittle Laboratory in Cambridge has helped to develop the efficient, reliable and safe power generation and aircraft propulsion systems we take for granted today. The next great challenge is to deliver zero carbon power and propulsion and we are working hard, alongside our industrial partners, government and other universities, to deliver the technologies needed to make this step. My talk will explain the potential and address some of the challenges associated with using zero emission, “Electric Jet Engines”, for flight.

As well as tackling the climate change challenge, the Whittle Lab has a long history of investigating sports aerodynamics. In the second half of the talk, we will see how the science used to design and test jet engines has been used to understand the mysterious art of swing bowling in cricket.

All welcome. More details, including a booking link, are here.

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Tue 18 Feb 11:00: Searching for Life in Stranger Seas Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89826306833?pwd=cnNHSG9OWHRjVngzMGVMc2F0NnA4dz09 Meeting ID: 898 2630 6833 Passcode: 662640

Mon, 13/01/2025 - 09:25
Searching for Life in Stranger Seas

With a planet teaming with life all around us, it is tempting to think that any life on other worlds must be like Earth life. But is that true, and if it is not, what limits can we place on where we might look for life on other worlds? Starting from the still-controversial possibility of the presence of phosphine in the clouds of Venus, I will discuss what we know (not much) can model (some) and speculate about how the chemistry of life might work on other worlds under conditions very different from Earth. In particular, different atmospheres give different chemistries, possibly chemistries that use solvents other than water as their base. Alternative solvents open up the possibility of life on many bodies previously considered uninhabitable, such as the clouds of Venus, the surface of Mars, even the Moon. I will end with some thoughts on complex, even intelligent, life and where we might find it.

Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89826306833?pwd=cnNHSG9OWHRjVngzMGVMc2F0NnA4dz09 Meeting ID: 898 2630 6833 Passcode: 662640

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Tue 04 Mar 11:00: High-Resolution PM2.5 Mapping Across Malaysia Using Multi-Satellite Data and Machine Learning Techniques

Thu, 09/01/2025 - 10:43
High-Resolution PM2.5 Mapping Across Malaysia Using Multi-Satellite Data and Machine Learning Techniques

Air pollution assessment in urban and rural areas is really challenging due to high spatio-temporal variability of aerosols and pollutants and the uncertainties in measurements and modelling estimates. Nevertheless, accurate determination of the pollution sources and distribution of PM2 .5 concentrations is especially important for source apportionment and mitigation strategies. This study provides estimates of PM2 .5 concentrations across Malaysia in high spatial resolution, based on multi-satellite data and machine learning (ML) models, namely Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Regression (SVR) and extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), also covering remote areas without measurement networks. The study aims to develop ML models that are simpler than previous works and demonstrate computational efficiency. Six sub-models were developed to represent different locations and seasons in Malaysia. Model 1 includes all data from 65 air-quality stations, Models 2 and 3 characterize urban/industrial and suburban sites, respectively, while Models 4 to 6 correspond to dry, wet, and inter-monsoon seasons, respectively. The RF technique exhibited slightly better performance compared to the XGBoost and SVR approaches. More specifically, for model 1, it exhibited a high correlation with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.64 and RMSE of 12.17 μg m−3, while similar results were obtained for models 3, model 4 and model 5. The lower performance (R2 = 0.16-0.94) observed in the wet and inter-monsoon seasons is due to fewer numbers of data used in model calibration. Integration of two Aerosol Optical Depth products from the Advanced Himawari Imager and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensors together with gases pollutants from Sentinel 5P enabled seamless seasonal PM2 .5 mapping over Malaysia, even for a short period of time. However, usage of data with insufficient information during the model training procedure, and lack of satellite data due to cloud contamination, can limit the PM2 .5 prediction accuracy.

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