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Placing climate change in the context of integrated risk

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The Priestley Centre welcomes Tami Bond from the University of Illinois who has just commenced a six-month Leverhulme Visiting Professorship.

Tami Bond is the Nathan M. Newmark Distinguished Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is a world leader in the study of particle emissions, their color and how they affect the climate, as well as interventions to reduce emissions around the world.

Professor Bond will be working on “Emission scenarios that integrate realism and connect risk”, aiming to generate emission scenarios that connect various forms of risk across climate, health and economy.

“Future climate change is a complex problem but we sometimes frame the impacts in a simplistic way,” said Professor Bond. “The reason we care is because people and ecosystems will be affected. The same people who are vulnerable to climate change are also vulnerable due to lack of access to resources – so there’s room for a framework to understand climate in the context of integrated risk.

“The only way to do that is to talk to people that understand the different faces of risks. One of the challenges of interdisciplinary work is finding the right people in other disciplines—and the Priestley Centre has so many relevant researchers that I can plug in with.”

Tami Bond was on the Highly Cited Researchers list in 2015, 2016 and 2017 and is co-lead author of the pioneering and highly cited study, Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: a scientific assessment paper. The landmark four-year study found that black carbon (soot) is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide and that its influence on warming the climate could be around twice what was previously estimated.

Priestley Centre director Piers Forster, who was another co-lead author of the 2013 report, said he was delighted to be working with Tami Bond again. “She has a highly acclaimed history of melding disciplines and seeking out innovative solutions, which makes her an excellent fit to the Priestley Centre and its aims. I can’t wait to see what comes out comes out of this!”