The Past, Present, and Future of Climate Change

Over the next few decades, global climate is expected to undergo a dramatic transformation in an ongoing response to greenhouse gas emissions. What do we expect the future climate to feel like? What might happen if we reduce emissions? In this lecture, Matt Fitzpatrick will offer an introduction to how Earth’s climate has changed in the past and why scientists are concerned about the future. He will also present his research on communicating the impacts of climate change using a web-based application that was covered by numerous media organizations, including CNN, the New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Scientific American, and USA Today.

About the Presenter: Matt Fitzpatrick is a Professor and Associate Director for Research at the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg, MD. He is a former aerospace engineer who studies how natural systems respond to changes in climate over short and long time periods and how best to manage natural resources. Fitzpatrick earned a bachelor of science in engineering from Penn State, a Masters in environmental science from the University of Montana, and a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Tennessee. Before moving to the Appalachian Lab in 2009, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. He was a Distinguished Visiting Researcher at CSIRO Land & Water in Canberra, Australia from 2017-2018.