Pryor to advise government on climate change

In the 1980s, a series of catastrophic droughts in the Sahel area of Africa inspired a young, idealistic teenager to choose the fields of atmospheric science and climate change.

“If we can predict severe climate events, we can prevent this from happening,” she said.

She was about to study at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

This teenager was Sara Pryor, now an atmospheric scientist and Provost’s Professor at IU. She has been appointed to the National Climate Assessment and Development Committee to assist the U.S. government as it copes with climate change.

Comprised of 40 of the best climate scientists in America and 13 representatives of federal agencies, the committee has been tasked with developing a National Climate Assessment by June 2013.

“Everyone on the committee should feel a sense of honor,” Pryor said.

The committee’s work will prove a real opportunity, she said, to serving improved public policy based on its work. Pryor said the committee will work to advance understanding of climate science and the scale of likely impacts, as well as developing mitigation strategies to limit future climate change and the risks it poses.

“Ultimately, what we need to try and do is provide our government, whether local, state or federal, with the best information to moderate the impact of climate change,” Pryor said.

The United Nations, Pryor said, uses a two-degree system to determine what level of climate change is dangerous, which it defines as threatening significant loss of human life.

However, she stressed that this is a global system, whereas the committee will be determining if the same system protects the United States against climate change and whether parts of the United States are more vulnerable.

The Midwest, for example, is now more at risk for flooding due to an intensified magnitude of rainfall — an intensification that once occurred every 100 years but now occurs every 10, Pryor said.

“Some of the most interesting climate questions pertain to the Midwest,” Pryor said, due to the agriculture of the area that affects the entire country.

As to the debate about climate change itself, Pryor said there is a real misunderstanding in the general public, despite the strong foundations of climate
science.   

“We know that humans have changed the climate, and that future change is inevitable,” Pryor said. “Change is certain. The uncertainty is over how much change.”

She added that climate science is not a belief system.

“It’s like gravity. We don’t talk about believing in gravity, we know it to be fact,” Pryor said.

While her committee work will be a significant time commitment, Pryor said she will still enjoy teaching her students with state-of-the-art, cutting-edge research and hands-on activities.

“That’s one of the fun things of being a professor,” she said.