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Renewable energy, alternative transportation and fuel, and business-research partnerships reduce our impact on global warming.

Spotlight: Climate

Scripps researcher Kerri Pratt and UC San Diego’s aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer (ATOFMS) sample the clouds high above Wyoming aboard a C-130 aircraft operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

UC San Diego professor Kim Prather found one way to get a handle on climate change: by examining dust, soot, salt, and other particles that form the ice crystals that then become the skeletons of clouds. Here’s how UC San Diego researchers literally got this project off the ground:

• The problem: It’s impossible to examine contents of clouds’ ice crystals on the ground because by then, they’ve melted.
  The solution: Fly up into the clouds to examine the contents of ice crystals in-situ.
• How we did it: UC San Diego researchers loaded a mass spectrometer into an aircraft and sampled ice crystals while flying high in the clouds over Wyoming.
• What we found: The clouds in Wyoming contained dust from Asia! Bits of bacteria, spores, and plants also hitched rides on the dust. These particles very likely influence the timing, types, and amounts of precipitation that falls.
• The impact: Understanding cloud composition can help scientists predict climate change and may even result in helping form rain clouds during drought.
• Get more details.

More about 2.0 climate

• Access UC San Diego’s 2009 annual emissions data on the California Climate Action Registry.
• The December, 2008 UC San Diego Climate Action Plan (PDF) (CAP) outlines sustainability goals for the next several decades at UC San Diego. The plan includes target dates and milestones for many areas, including greenhouse gas emissions, operations, and procurement.
• The November, 2008 UC San Diego Sustainability Assessment Report (PDF) examines 11 areas of climate concern and a total of 35 indicators, or metrics, which set a baseline for measuring future performance.

Ongoing projects

• The Climate Solutions Work Group, comprised of senior faculty, researchers, operational staff, and administrators implements a broad range of sustainability initiatives, including management of the Climate Action Plan. Political and business leaders routinely attend the meetings of this group to discuss strategies for leveraging UC San Diego’s environmental leadership.
• The UCSD Advisory Committee on Sustainability (ACS) provides perspective to our administration regarding academic programs, faculty planning, campus operations, and areas for improvement.
• As a charter member, we were the first California university to join the California Climate Action Registry, a voluntary greenhouse gas (GHG) registry created in 2001 to promote early actions to reduce GHG emissions by organizations.
• UC San Diego is one of just a few universities to join the Chicago Climate Exchange, a financial institution begun in 2000 to apply financial innovation and incentives to further social, environmental, and economic goals.