Canada First Research Excellence
Fund 2022 candidate
Dr. Waite is a world-leading researcher drawing the international community’s attention to the risk of omitting the ocean from the formulation of climate targets. She is focused on giving Canada and the world the data we need to ensure our goals to reach net zero carbon emissions are rooted in science and preparing us to tackle the serious challenges ahead.
There is evidence that the ocean’s ability to filter carbon from the atmosphere is changing. The rate is still unknown, but the fact remains that the processes have the potential to fail. This could jeopardize the credibility of global climate targets and move us further from Canada’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.
Dr. Chang studies aerosol particles in the air – where they come from, and how they change, move and impact current weather and longer-term climate change. Having completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, she’s spent thousands of hours in the field on ships and in coastal regions studying the atmosphere and its interplay with the ocean.
We need to understand how energy, gases and particles are exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean. It’s not a simple process and it can go in both directions. There are layers on top of the ocean that prevent gases from absorbing, there are waves, there are storms, there is sea spray, they can all have an impact. And the ultimate question is, how do they affect climate?
Dr. Musgrave studies how the ocean moves and mixes, and what that means for its chemical composition and the lifeforms that call its depths home. In particular, she is interested in exploring how carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by enhancing ocean alkalinity. This idea is a potential solution to our climate change problem, but its safety and efficacy needs to be verified.
As the Earth’s largest natural carbon reservoir, there is a strong argument for looking to the ocean for carbon dioxide removal. There is cautious optimism that a process such as ocean alkalinity enhancement may prove useful in combatting climate change, but we need to fully understand the implications and impacts before we move forward.
At this moment, more than 84 million people are displaced from their homes worldwide. A startling figure made more arresting by the fact that climate change promises to make the issue dramatically worse. Political scientist Dr. Banerjee focuses on tackling forced migration by developing policy responses that aim to give people peace, safety, and security.
Record levels of forced global displacement are pushing the issue onto the international agenda. And yet, we’ve made no progress dealing with the climate-induced migration that promises to displace people at a scale of magnitude that far exceeds anything we have seen before. Future challenges require a better understanding of what climate changes are coming so the global community can respond.
This website was created by Dalhousie University to support its application for the Canada First Research Excellence Fund 2022 in partnership with Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université Laval, and Memorial University of Newfoundland.
