Season 4 | Episode 2

This Most Excellent Canopy

Transcript

There are quite a few things working against us when it comes to understanding how urgently we need to act on climate change. But there's also the simple fact that we can't literally see how we're changing the atmosphere. It’s time to give the atmosphere its due.

This is Threshold Season 4: “Time to 1.5.” In this episode, we go straight up, into our atmosphere.

Original illustration by Sally Deng © 2021.

How to listen

Listen for free on our website, or anywhere you find podcasts.

Guests

 
Featured
Dr. Anjali Tripathi
Dr. Anjali Tripathi

Dr. Anjali Tripathi is an astrophysicist who researches how planets form and evolve. She is an avid science communicator, whose talks have been featured by TED.com, the Smithsonian, WGBH, and others.

Dr. Hannah Wakeford
Dr. Hannah Wakeford

Dr. Wakeford is a lecturer in Astrophysics at the University of Bristol, UK. Hannah leads a group investigating the atmospheres of transiting exoplanets using space-based telescopes.

Dr. Wakeford is the co-lead of the Space Telescopes Advanced Research Group for the Atmospheres of Transiting Exoplanets (STARGATE), a collaboration which spans institutes across the UK and USA. Her work focuses on characterising the atmospheres of exoplanets through observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, and working towards a better understanding of how exoplanets can be explored further with Webb.

Dr. Francina Dominguez
Dr. Francina Dominguez

As a hydroclimatologist, Dr. Francina Dominguez’s work is focused on the interactions between the land and the atmosphere, and more specifically, on changes in hydrology and climate due to human modification of the land surface and greenhouse gas emissions. The two primary lines of research in her group look at land-atmosphere interaction from two perspectives: 1) the effect of climate variability and change, primarily extreme events, on surface hydrology and 2) the effect of changes in surface hydrology on climate.

 

Read more

 
Featured
How the Keeling Curve will need to bend to limit global warming to 1.5C
How the Keeling Curve will need to bend to limit global warming to 1.5C

Guest post featured on Carbon Brief

Explainer: How scientists estimate ‘climate sensitivity’
Explainer: How scientists estimate ‘climate sensitivity’

Article published by Carbon Brief

How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming?
How Exactly Does Carbon Dioxide Cause Global Warming?

Article published by Columbia Climate School

What a Piece of Work
What a Piece of Work

A scene from the movie Hamlet (1996) that inspired the name for this Threshold episode

"What a Piece of Work is Man"
"What a Piece of Work is Man"

An original song from the Broadway musical, Hair, that inspired the name for this Threshold episode

An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of The Atmosphere
An Ocean of Air: A Natural History of The Atmosphere

Book by Gabrielle Walker, referenced by Threshold guest Francina Dominguez in this episode

 

Time to 1.5

This Most Excellent Canopy is episode two in Threshold Season 4, Time to 1.5

Credits

This episode was reported, written and produced by Amy Martin with help from producer Nick Mott and managing editor Erika Janik. Fact checking by Sara Sneath and Nick Mott. Original music by Todd Sickafoose. Episode art by Sally Deng. Cover art by Maggy Contreras at Bahía Design.The rest of the Threshold team is Eva Kalea, Taliah Farnsworth, Shola Lawal, Caysi Simpson, and Deneen Wiske. Thanks to Hana Carey, Dan Carreno, Luca Borghese, Julia Barry, Kara Cromwell, Katie deFusco, Caroline Kurtz, and Gabby Piamonte. Special thanks to Arianna Varuolo-Clarke and Ulf Nilsson. And extra special thanks to who sent in recordings of breath and wind and frogs and elephant seals used in this episode: Christopher McAllister, Anna Taugher, Claudia Strijek, Evan Levy, Jürgen Morgenstern, and Shelley Eisenrich

 

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