FieldSound in the Field: AGU24 in Washington, D.C. with Robert Wood

The UW College of the Environment connected with the global Earth and space science community and showcased the incredible work of our researchers, students and staff at the American Geophysical Union’s Annual Meeting 2024 (AGU24) in Washington, D.C., December 9-13, 2024. The annual gathering of more than 25,000 scientists from over 100 countries is the largest in the world, and gives researchers the opportunity to share their work and connect with friends and colleagues. 

Senior Marketing Communications Director John Meyer also hosted interviews for FieldSound, our official podcast. Check out John's interview with UW Department of Atmospheric Science and Climate's Professor Robert Wood.

https://environment.uw.edu/podcast

Transcript

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From the

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University of Washington College of the Environment.

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This is FieldSound.

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Hello everybody, I’m John Meyer, I’m Senior Director for Marketing and

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at the College of the Environment at the University of Washington.

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We are here again at AGU24.

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And today we have with us Professor Rob Wood,

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who is in the Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science,

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and he is the newest member of our college

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that has been inducted as an AGU Fellow.

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So congratulations, Rob. Thank you very much.

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Yeah, and would love to hear from you a little bit about what

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that honor means to you.

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And what an AGU fellow is in the first place.

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So AGU Fellow, a small number of the

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membership of AGU

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get elected to be fellows every year, and I think it's for

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essentially achievements in science.

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And it's not just in scientific research, but in

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communications and

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mentoring and lots of aspects of the scientific endeavor.

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And for me, it's it's

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a tremendous honor it tells me that, you know, my colleagues, you know,

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feel that I’ve made some achievements, which is always nice to see.

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And it's a you know, it's been, it's it's really a journey

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that’s involved so many other people.

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It's hard to think of it as just of telling me that I've done well.

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You know, it's more like, you know, my group has been awesome

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and they’ve done amazing research over the last 10, 15, 20 years.

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Yeah, it takes a village to do all of this stuff.

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So tell us a little bit about your research. What is it that you do?

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So I study clouds in the climate system, particularly

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how they are affected or may be affected in the future by things

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like climate change, like warming temperatures,

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increases in carbon dioxide, but increasingly aerosol particles and how

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now we're going into the 21st century and realizing that there are a tremendous

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health risk.

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And so there's a lot of clean up activities— that needs to happen

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The cloud angle there is that actually those aerosol particles cool the planet

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by making clouds more reflective.

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And as we take those particles away for health reasons, very good reasons,

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they are likely and we don't know how much,

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but they're likely to make the Earth a little bit darker, bring in more sunlight

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and actually increase the warming rates in addition to that from carbon dioxide.

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And so that could be a major problem.

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It could increase the warming rates by 20 to 40%, the calculations suggest.

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So we really want to understand that and understand how clouds respond.

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So in other words, as we

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take care of one issue that has a negative effect, i.e.

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Earth pollution, essentially

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we may be introducing some other sort of negative effect, which is increased

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climate warming

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Potentially, yeah and we don’t know the amounts

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We still don't know how much those aerosols have cooled.

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The assessments say that it could be up

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to a third of the warming rates from global warming.

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And so when we take those away and we're taking them away rapidly,

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that's the thing they’re going down rapidly, where 1990 was the peak of sulfur

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dioxide emissions and we we’re about down to something like 50% of that now

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another 50% could go and that would essentially take away that cooling effect.

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Wow. Very interesting.

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So you’ve probably been talking a lot about your science this week.

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I'm sure you’ve given a talk or a poster

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tell us a little bit about that.

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What else you’ve been up to this week.

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Yeah.

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So I did do a talk yesterday

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the fellows in the atmospheric sciences section asked if I wanted to present.

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That was a unique presentation because it wasn't a general scientific talk

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it had science in it but I also wanted to highlight the activities that go

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on around science, the importance of groups meeting, different

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groups of people coming together, all mentoring, etc. etc.

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and the importance of the program managers

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in in funding the research and in organizing research.

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I think I was able to talk about that.

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I also chaired a session on Monday on my research theme of,

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you know, how aerosols are affecting clouds. Very cool.

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So is AGU one of these conferences you come to a lot?

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And and if so, what do you get out of coming

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to AGU? AGU is unique in the sense

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that it brings all the disciples of the geosciences together.

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I come

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most years is it's very hard not to come to these meetings

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because there's so much, so much vibrancy there

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It's a way to meet many colleagues that you may not always meet.

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Yeah, it's folks from around the world.

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so it's a unique opportunity.

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What's been a highlight for you this week?

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I think a highlight for me is being a fellow

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becoming a fellow and

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there was a ceremony yesterday and

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the best part of it, to be honest, was

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they had testimonials from mentor mentees.

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And one of my PhD students 

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gave a testimonial there, and I was close to tears it was so moving.

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That's really cool.

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And one last question for you.

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This is a big overwhelming conference.

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What advice do you have for folks that are attending for the first time?

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That's a very good question. I think

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it's hard

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to know exactly the best way, but don't feel you have to sit

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and talk up the talk after the talk.

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Sometimes the poster sessions are where you get the best discourse and

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where you'll be able to meet

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the most people. Come to the booth here, College of the Environment,

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you'll meet people.

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It's really about having conversations

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I would say. For me, it's more of of that than just sitting in science talks.

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Absolutely.

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All right, Rob,

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thanks very much for your time and congrats again on becoming an AGU

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Fellow. Thank you.