Join us
With wildfires becoming increasingly frequent and intense, droughts gripping the land, and sea levels steadily rising, it’s evident that climate change has reached a critical point in California.
The state is grappling with the profound impacts of this global crisis. How has climate change transformed California’s landscapes, from the scorching valleys to the towering forests? What are the consequences for society, including agriculture, public health, and economic stability? In the face of such challenges, what insights can experts like Prof. Dr. Sonia I. Seneviratne and Prof. Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh offer to shed light on the gravity of the situation and provide potential solutions? Join us as we delve into the pressing issue of climate change in California and its profound effects on society.
Prof. Dr. Sonia I. Seneviratne from ETH Zurich and Prof. Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh from Stanford University’s Doerr School of Sustainability will be presenting their work and personal research projects on Global Warming, taking first a global perspective and then diving into the local effects we have all witnessed in the past few years.
* please note that this event is only open to alumni of Swiss universities.
Program
- 5:30pm – Doors open
- 6:00pm – Keynote of Sonia Seneviratne and Noah Diffenbaugh
- 6:45pm – Q&A
- 7:00pm – Networking
- 8:30pm – End of the event
iCal / Outlook
Event start time
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San Francisco
5:30PM
Speakers
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Prof. Dr. Sonia I. Seneviratne
Prof. Dr. Sonia I. Seneviratne
Associate Vice President for Sustainability and Professor for Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH ZürichProf. Dr. Sonia Seneviratne is Full Professor for Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. After her undergraduate and graduate studies in biology and environmental physics at the University of Lausanne and ETH Zurich, she was awarded her PhD thesis in climate science in 2003 at ETH Zurich. She did research stays at MIT, Boston (USA) in 1998-1999 and the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland (USA) in 2003-2004. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University (April-July 2023).
Her research addresses climate change and extreme events, land-climate interactions, and terrestrial water processes. She was a Coordinating Lead Author and Lead Author on several IPCC reports, including the IPCC Special Report on Extreme events (SREX, 2012), the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C Global warming (2018), and the IPCC 6 th Assessment report (2021).
Sonia Seneviratne belongs to the most cited scientists in her field. She received several awards for her research, including a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (2014), the Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union (2013), the Hans Oeschger Medal from the European Geosciences Union, and an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University.
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Prof. Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh
Prof. Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh
Professor at Stanford's Doerr School of SustainabilityProf. Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh is the Kara J Foundation Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow in Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability, and the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.
He studies the climate system, including the processes by which climate change could impact agriculture, water resources, and human health. Dr. Diffenbaugh has served the scholarly community in a number of roles, including as the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the peer-review journal Environmental Research: Climate, and as Editor-in-Chief of Geophysical Research Letters from 2014-2018. He has also served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and has provided testimony and scientific expertise to Federal, State and local officials.
Dr. Diffenbaugh is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a recipient of the James R. Holton Award and William Kaula Award from the AGU, and has been recognized as a Kavli Fellow by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
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