Climate scientist:
DB: This is Earth & Sky, with Chip Trepte, a NASA climate scientist.
JB: Earth & Sky asked this scientist how his work affects the way he sees the natural world.
Chip Trepte: I appreciate nature in a way that I didn’t as a younger person. I realize now that there are complex relationships that exist not only between clouds and rain, but you know our wildlife, our ecosystems. And they’re all so intricately related to one another that you can’t study one by itself, but realize that it’s part of a grander system.
DB: Trepte’s interest in clouds started early.
Chip Trepte: As a kid, you know, I was one of the kids that always ran to the window to watch the thunderstorm grow or watch the snow come down and I was always fascinated by clouds and how they developed. And gradually my interest transformed from just understanding the weather around me to starting to understand the climate in the entire planet and how all these clouds feed into the climate. And now all the intense interest in how changes to our climate system may be occurring, clouds are an important part of that. And I’m really interested in being part of that process.
JB: Trepte is the project scientist for a satellite mission called Calipso. It’s measuring clouds and aerosols – fine particles from volcanoes and dust, plus burning wood, gas and coal. Trepte hopes Calipso will answer the question – will increasing aerosol pollution speed up or slow down global warming? Our thanks today to NASA. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Our thanks to:
Chip Trepte
Deputy Principal Investigator, CALIPSO
NASA Langley Research Center
Hampton, VA
Additional Teacher Resources
NASA: Clouds and Climate Change: The Thick and Thin of It
The net effect of clouds on climate change depends on which cloud types change, and whether they become more or less abundant, thicker or thinner, and higher or lower in altitude. This site explores the connection between cloud formation and climate change.
NOAA: Clouds and Climate
Clouds play a vital role in our climate by regulating the amount of solar energy that reaches the surface and the amount of energy from the Earth that is radiated back into space. The more energy that is trapped by the planet, the warmer our climate will grow. If less energy is collected, the climate will become cooler. Understanding this energy balance is fundamental to answering any of the questions posed by climate change.
