Hear our interview, which originally aired on the East County Magazine Radio Show on KNSJ 89.1 FM on December 14, 2015: https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/sites/eastcountymagazine.org/files/audio/2016/February/Newsmaker-ClimateScientistSeveringhausJeff.mp3
By Miriam Raftery
Photo: Ice core sample, Creative Commons image from AntarcticGlaciers.org
February 27, 2016 (San Diego’s East County) – Jeffrey Severinghaus, PhD, is one of the world’s top climate scientists. A professor of geosciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, he was recently appointed to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Severinghaus has pioneered research efforts measuring trapped gas bubbles in ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland to detect past ocean temperature changes – with astonishing results.
Asked about climate skeptics who claim climate change is merely cyclical, he quickly dispels the theory that recent warming is part of an age-old trend. That’s because molecules from burning fossil fuels are chemically different from carbon naturally seeping from the ocean floor. The differences are obvious, measurable, and provide clear evidence that man’s actions are rapidly accelerating climate change.
Moreover, his research suggests that warming could occur much more rapidly than most other studies have predicted.