How we know there’s climate change, and humans to blame

Tripati, an associate professor at UCLA’s Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, has spent her career putting climate data into context. Her lab uses chemistry to reconstruct the climate norms of the distant past—norms that make today’s atmosphere look a lot more alarming.

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In an interview with Popular Science, Aradhna Tripati, an associate professor at UCLA’s Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, employs a series of humorous analogies to articulate her conviction that climate change is real. “It’s like you’re adding drops of poison to a glass of water,” she offers. Or adding hot sauce to a burrito: “The more hot sauce you add to your burrito, the spicier it gets. That’s what happens when you add more CO2 to the atmosphere.” However, while Tripati’s tone is light, the nature of her work is serious. Her research is dedicated to tracking climate and figuring out its modern-day trajectory, and her results suggest that climate change is definitely happening, and its implications will be serious. According to Tripati, cutting CO2 emissions is an integral step in curbing the destruction of our ozone layer and mitigating the impacts of climate change in years to come.

Read more at Popular Science