Climate Change Science and Solutions

While the state of the world in 2021 may not easily inspire optimism, even among folks who are normally cheery, it seems negativity has never entered the mind of Nan Jenks-Jay ’86 MES.

The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication is playing a key role in Facebook’s expanded effort to combat the spread of climate change misinformation on its platform. 

Anthony Leiserowitz, founder and director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), has been ranked second on Reuters “Hot List,” a system of identifying and ranking 1,000 climate scientists from around the world.

A research team led by F&ES Professor Michelle Bell has received a $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to examine environmental health disparities within the U.S. senior population.

In its annual Global Humanitarian Overview, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs cited a Yale-led study that showed a lack of funding for disaster relief related to climate change.

A $100 million gift from FedEx will help fund the new Center, which will be focused on developing natural solutions for reducing atmospheric carbon. The Center will support and accelerate research across academic disciplines, helping to establish a more sustainable and healthier future for our planet.

A new Yale-led study suggests that regional variations may cause the phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, and that the impacts of haze pollution in the U.S. and China vary significantly.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, F&ES Prof. Justin Farrell described a decades-old “well-coordinated and well-funded” movement intended to deceive the American people about the reality of climate change.

During a recent event, hosted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, journalists from The New York Times Magazine described the urgent need for a new, more effective conversation around climate change — a moral story, focused on humans, that currently isn’t being told.

While uncertainty continues to surround the U.S. role in the Paris Agreement, world leaders gathered in New York City this week to demonstrate how state, city, and business leaders are stepping in to confront the challenges of climate change.

More than 40 members of the Yale community, including 38 students from F&ES, will be in Madrid next month for COP25, the annual “conference of the parties” hosted by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

More than 40 people from Yale will travel to Katowice, Poland for the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as COP 24, including several F&ES students who have trained for climate negotiations.

Forty members of the Yale community, including faculty, alumni, and 35 students from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES), will be in Bonn, Germany this month for the UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP23.

Xuhui Lee, a professor of meteorology at F&ES, says that it’s difficult to link climate change to two recent hurricanes that devastated parts of the U.S. and the Caribbean. But decades of scientific research do suggest that weather extremes such as Hurricanes Harvey and Irma will become more common — and cities will pay a steep price.

The Yale Climate Conference, a two-day gathering of influential political, diplomatic and business leaders held on campus this week, was organized in part to fill a void, said former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.