Natalie Mahowald

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Natalie M. Mahowald (* 1963 ) is an American earth system scientist . She is Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences / College of Engineering . She is a recognized expert on the interactions of aerosols, biogeochemistry and climate change.

Life

Mahowald graduated in 1988 as Bachelor in Physics and German graduated from the Washington University in St. Louis off as Master of Science natural resources in politics she graduated from the University of Michigan and in 1996 received his doctorate she doctorate in meteorology at MIT . She also worked as a consultant on air pollution and studied in Germany before completing her doctorate. She worked as a postdoc at Stockholm University before moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara . She then moved to the National Center of Atmospheric Research before joining the faculty at Cornell University in 2007.

In 2013 Mahowald received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the category of natural sciences in the field of geosciences . Improving the understanding of the interactions between aerosols and the carbon cycle is the focus of Mahowald's Guggenheim Fellowship.

Act

The focus of Mahowald's work lies in the area of ​​natural feedback in the climate system (see climate sensitivity ), how these have reacted to natural climate factors in the past and how they are likely to react in the future. Much of her work focuses on mineral aerosols , which are a vivid example of an earth system process, as they both react to the climate and at the same time force it to change. She has also looked at fire, the carbon cycle and, most recently, understanding natural methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

One of the themes that pervades her work is the interplay of different components of the earth system and how they change the climate . One example is her article published in the journal Science , in which interactions in the aerosol-carbon cycle ( biogeochemistry ) were identified as an essential climate factor: Human activities lead to the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide or methane as well as aerosols (tiny particles that lead to haze) and other gases that are harmful to human health and affect air quality. The cooling effect of anthropogenic aerosols on the climate and their contribution to compensating for the global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions have been known for several decades. In her contribution, Mahowald points out that the influence of anthropogenic aerosols on the carbon cycle reduced carbon dioxide concentrations by up to 50 ppm (carbon dioxide has increased by 100 ppm in the last 100 years) and, through this mechanism, also offset carbon dioxide emissions. Since aerosols cause poor air quality, they can make people sick or even lead to early death. As the wealth of states increases, they should therefore reduce aerosol emissions. A disadvantage of this, however, is that it does not have a compensatory effect on climate change and thus more carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere.

Mahowald also dealt with the topic of iron fertilization . Another topic she has been working on is HNLC .

She is one of the authors of the IPCC's special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees .

Publications (selection)

  • TD Jickells, ZS An, KK Andersen, AR Baker, G. Bergametti, N. Brooks, ... and H. Kawahata: Global iron connections between desert dust, ocean biogeochemistry, and climate. In: Science . Volume 308, No. 5718, 2005, pp. 67-71.
  • NM Mahowald, AR Baker, G. Bergametti, N. Brooks, RA Duce, TD Jickells, ... and I. Tegen: Atmospheric global dust cycle and iron inputs to the ocean. In: Global biogeochemical cycles. Volume 19, No. 4, 2005.
  • JF Lamarque, TC Bond, V. Eyring, C. Granier, A. Heil, Z. Klimont, ... and MG Schultz: Historical (1850-2000) gridded anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions of reactive gases and aerosols: methodology and application . In: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Volume 10, No. 15, 2010, pp. 7017-7039.
  • N. Mahowald: Aerosol indirect effect on biogeochemical cycles and climate. In: Science. Volume 334, No. 6057, 2011, pp. 794–796, doi: 10.1126 / science.1207374
  • Daniel S. Ward, Natalie M. Mahowald and Silvia Kloster: Potential Climate Forcing of Land Use and Land Cover Change. In: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Volume 14, 2014.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Geocities 2003
  2. ↑ a b Special Report on Global warming of 1.5 ° C (SR15)
  3. ↑ a b https://research.cornell.edu/researchers/natalie-m-mahowald
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/natalie-mahowald/
  5. ↑ N. Mahowald: Aerosol indirect effect on biogeochemical cycles and climate. In: Science . Volume 334, No. 6057, 2011, pp. 794–796, doi: 10.1126 / science.1207374
  6. ↑ Natalie M. Mahowald et al .: Atmospheric global dust cycle and iron inputs to the ocean. In: Global biogeochemical cycles. Volume 19, No. 4, 2005.
  7. ^ Thibaut Wagener, Cécile Guieu, Rémi Losno, Sophie Bonnet, and Natalie Mahowald: Revisiting atmospheric dust export to the Southern Hemisphere ocean: Biogeochemical implications. In: Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Volume 22, No. 2, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Mahowald, Natalie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mahowald, Natalie M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American earth system scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1963