CARBONDALE (WSIL) -- The Southern Illinois University Honors Program will host the annual Charles D. Tenney Distinguished Lecture Series with a talk focused on Climate Change.
Dr. Justin Schoof, Director of the School of Earth Systems and Sustainability says, "I was honored to be invited to give the presentation this year and the topic is climate change detection and attribution."
Schoof wants to help people better understand climate change by using science. "Climate Change is obviously a politically charged topic. I am a climate scientist so I try to focus on scientific aspects and stay away from political aspects so this talk, this presentation on Thursday really won't have any information in it about the politics of climate change. It's all about our scientific understanding."
His talk will focus on two essential topics detection and attribution.
"Climate change detection refers to our ability to detect that a change has occurred so for example we know that global near surface air temperatures increased by about 1 degree Celsius since 1880. That's an example of a detection statement", explains Schoof.
While attribution focuses on why our climate is changing.
Schoof says one of the most common questions he receives is, "The most common one that I get is, is climate change natural or is it from us? I think people like that simple binary choice but the reality is of course that it's both. Natural variations have important implications for climate but also humans are now a really dominate factor in governing how climate changes over time."
Schoof says that the change is evident right here in Southern Illinois, "One of the statistics that I share in Southern Illinois is that the, what we call the frost free season length. The length of time between the last free in the spring and the first freeze in the fall is almost a month longer now than it was in 1950, so it's increasing very rapidly and that has to do with the increase of minimum temperatures."
The Lecture will be open to the public on Thursday from 6 to 7 in the Morris Library, followed by a reception. For more information on the event click .
