Caldeira Lab

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Aug

2020

Do we need to look beyond batteries for seasonal energy storage?

By Leslie Willoughby

STANFORD, CA - Some U.S. states and other regions of the world have set policy goals for all electricity generation to come from zero-carbon or renewable resources by 2050. Because wind and solar ...

Energy

Aug

2020

Would long-duration storage reduce cost of renewable electricity?

By Leslie Willoughby

STANFORD, CA - Several U.S. states mandate zero-carbon electricity systems based primarily on renewable technologies such as wind and solar power. Reliable and affordable electricity systems based on ...

Energy

Feb

2020

How do the climate effects of air pollution impact the global economy?

By Carnegie HQ

Washington, DC— Aerosol emissions from burning coal and wood are dangerous to human health, but it turns out that by cooling the Earth they also diminish global economic inequality, according to a ...

Aug

2019

Would a carbon tax help to innovate more-efficient energy use?

By Carnegie HQ

Washington, DC— Taxing carbon emissions would drive innovation and lead to improved energy efficiency, according to a new paper published in Joule from Carnegie’s Rong Wang (now at Fudan University ...

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CALDEIRA LAB LEGACY SITE

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Ken Caldeira

Senior Staff Scientist Emeritus

Global Ecology

Carnegie Institution for Science

kcaldeira@carnegiescience.edu
650-704-7212
Office:
260 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94305, US

Profile

Bio

Ken Caldeira is a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, where his job is “to make important scientific discoveries.” He also serves as a Professor (by courtesy) in the Stanford University Department of Earth System Science. Among Caldeira’s key contributions to science are his relatively early recognition of the threats posed by ocean acidification, his pioneering investigations into the environmental consequences of intentional intervention in the climate system (“geoengineering”), and the first peer-reviewed study to estimate near-zero-emission energy needs consistent with a 2°C climate stabilization target. He has also played a central role in helping to elucidate what our understanding of long-term geochemical cycles implies for the fate of today’s carbon dioxide emissions. More recently, he has been focusing on trying to understand what sorts of energy systems could facilitate a transition to a near-zero emission economy that will allow both human and natural systems to flourish.

Biographies for Ken Caldeira

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Carnegie Affiliation:

DGE Collaborators

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Caldeira Lab

Download:

CaldeiraCurrentCV20200330.pdf

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Carnegie Energy Innovation

People

Enrico Antonini (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Enrico is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist for the Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. His research aims to understand the physics of wind power extraction for regional-scale wind farms. Enrico is investigating the efficiency of large wind farms and which physical parameters control their power extraction.

Before joining the Carnegie Institution for Science, Enrico conducted research in wind energy, computational fluid dynamics and optimization algorithms with the goal of advancing the knowledge of wind turbine aerodynamics and creating new design frameworks for the wind turbine industry.
Min Chen (Visiting Investigator)
Lei Duan (Postdoctoral Research Scientist)
Lei Duan's research topic is about modeling the climate response to external forcing, especially the global scale geoengineering schemes during his PhD. At Carnegie, he will continue working on climate simulations and also helping with the energy modeling work in Ken Caldeira's group. He had a wonderful experience when he was here previously, and feels happy to come back and work with everyone in Carnegie.
David Farnham (Postdoctoral Fellow)
David Farnham is an environmental engineer and hydroclimatologist interested in how climate affects our engineered water and energy systems. David’s work can broadly be described as the development of statistical models to estimate and/or predict climate risks at time scales ranging from daily to seasonal to multi-decadal.

With regard to water systems, David has authored papers on topics ranging from the prediction of urban water contamination, to the estimation of future regional riverine flooding hazard, to the climate drivers of seasonal precipitation variability in water scarce regions such as the Southwestern, United States.

Within energy systems, David has been focusing on weather/climate dependent renewable energy technologies; namely solar, wind, and hydro power. For example, David has recently been investigating the implications of yearly to decadal fluctuations in potential wind and solar energy supply for energy system planning.
Muriel Hauser (Predoctoral Research Scientist )
Bill Hayes (Programmer)
Bill creates programs to analyze data from climate models for Ken Caldeira and others in his lab.
After receiving his BSEE and MSEE from the University of Cincinnati in his home town he did his first professional work developing hardware and software for a Pediatric Cardiology research lab at Duke University. After working for many small companies in California he became a Systems Engineer at Siemens Oncology in Concord before joining Carnegie
He currently resides in Las Vegas tutoring Python online in his spare time.
Manoela Romano de Orte (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Manoela Romanó de Orte is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in in the Caldeira Lab at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology. She is a marine scientist, studying the fate and the effects of pollutants in the coastal environment. Her research considers traditional pollutants, such as heavy metals, alongside emerging contaminant threats. These emerging threats include plastics and the global effects of humans dumping carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, which warms and acidifies the ocean. Manoela's latest work focuses on the response of coral reef ecosystems to climate change and to plastic pollution.
Tyler Ruggles (Research Associate)
I am a scientist studying low carbon energy transitions. How do we create a low carbon energy system? What could that system look like? What technological breakthroughs are necessary? These are some of the questions which motivate my research.

My current work focuses on studying the interannual variability of renewable energy resources and potential consequences for a highly-renewable grid. I also model the conversion of electric power to liquid fuels or hydrogen to study the benefits these technologies can bring to the grid including increased flexibility.

Before starting on energy systems research, I completed a PhD in particle physics while based at CERN working for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Leslie Willoughby (Science Writer)
Leslie's first love was a horned toad that lived in her backyard in Albuquerque. It disappeared over winter, emerged in spring, and showed her that nature changes over time. Throughout childhood, she yearned to share that lizard's world with others.

In college she studied environmental interpretation. Afterward, at the newly created Ohio EPA, she funded programs that regulated scrubbers in coal-fired power plants and improved sewage treatment facilities. Later, as a science teacher, she set the lab tables with a new narrative each morning. Monday’s tale might compare skeletons; Tuesday’s could mimic a lunar eclipse.

When climate change became the biggest nature story, Leslie signed on as a reporter in the Eastern Sierra. While forest fires rage and drought starves California's snowpack and water supply, Leslie heeds the call for epic writing muscle. She works out every day.

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