UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE) have announced a community forum on climate research at Penn State. The online event, titled "Building Convergence in Climate Science," will occur from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, June 17. The community is encouraged to register and attend the meeting.
Erica Smithwick, an IEE associate director and the E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Professor of Geography, is helping coordinate the event. She said the meeting is an effort to build and unify the University’s climate community to help further mitigate the climate crisis.
“At Penn State, we have individuals across the campus, from research to academics to operations, who are helping to identify and apply solutions to solve the climate crisis,” Smithwick said. “We have an opportunity to find where researchers converge and how we can strengthen the climate science at Penn State.”
The meeting will focus on three main pillars:
- Mitigation, including efforts to reduce or prevent the emission of greenhouse gases;
- Resilience, the ability of society to absorb the stresses of climate change or adapt, reorganize and evolve; and
- Impacts, effects of climate change on ecosystems and human societies.
Concurrent breakout sessions will allow meeting participants to focus on pillars they would like to discuss. In each of those breakout sessions, participants will discuss the pillars through the exploration of five key topics: convergent research opportunities, current Penn State assets, barriers to action, recommendations, and exemplar success stories.
The meeting will conclude with a report out from each session.
“Identifying our similarities, capitalizing on our strengths and strategizing on how we can move forward together may be our best step toward averting the climate crisis,” Smithwick said.