Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the best-known solution to mitigating the impacts of climate change. Climate geoengineering may be needed to avoid the most catastrophic impacts. That is the research focus of ARCS Scholar Jessica Wan at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego.

Geoengineering was originally proposed as a large-scale and deliberate modification of the Earth’s system to reduce the effects of global warming. Wan focuses on computer simulations of Earth to model a more regional geoengineering strategy called marine cloud brightening (MCB).

“The goal is to form brighter low clouds over the ocean by spraying small particles such as sea salt into clouds to cool surface temperatures,” she explains.

Wan says that MCB could be applied over smaller coastal areas to create more targeted climate effects.

“In my work, we have demonstrated that MCB applied off the coast of California can reduce summer heat stress in the Western United States.”

Wan’s advisor is Katharine Ricke, an associate professor who holds a joint appointment atScripps and the School of Global Policy and Strategy.  Ricke is a climate change scientist who integrates goals from physical and social sciences to analyze climate policy challenges. Ricke is an ARCS Scholar alum, who earned her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

In a full-circle connection, Ricke’s scholar award from ARCS Pittsburgh was funded by member Beth Wainwright, who is now the President of ARCS National.

Wan explains that “more work, including my PhD work, is testing other regions including the mid-latitude and high-latitude clouds which could remotely cool land through teleconnections.” These teleconnections (links between distant geographic regions in the Earth system) might have fewer side effects.

Wan explains, “More work, including my Ph.D. research, is testing other regions, including mid-latitude and high-latitude clouds, which could remotely cool land through teleconnections.”

These teleconnections—links between distant geographic regions in the Earth’s system—might have fewer side effects.

“The ARCS Foundation award has been pivotal in granting me the freedom to focus on conducting high-impact research and exploring my intellectual curiosities. Being able to commit fully to my research and mentoring with the extra financial boost from the ARCS award has greatly enhanced my professional development and my bandwidth to give back to the community,” Wan says.

With an ARCS scholar alum as her graduate school advisor, Wan adds, “ARCS demonstrates the value in investing in and empowering generations of scientists.”

Why is Wan so committed to climate science? She explains:

“I lived in Amsterdam for four years as an expat from middle school to my freshman year of high school. While abroad, I was exposed to a more sustainable way of living, surrounded by windmills, cycling to school and soccer practice, and learning to properly sort recyclables at the bins outside the grocery store.”

“It was from that point on that I knew I wanted to spend my life protecting our planet,” Wan says.   

Full access link to Wan’s Nature Climate Change article: https://rdcu.be/dLuZE