Caldeira Lab

Lab Tabs

Our Research

How to build a better wind farm

By Carnegie HQ

Washington, DC— Location, location, location—when it comes to the placement of wind turbines, the old real estate adage applies, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National ...

Mar

2021

Algae growing on dead coral could paint a falsely rosy portrait of reef health

By Carnegie HQ

Washington, DC— Algae colonizing dead coral are upending scientists’ ability to accurately assess the health of a coral reef community, according to new work from a team of marine science experts led ...

Dec

2020

Infrastructure key to balancing climate and economic goals in developing countries

By Carnegie HQ

Washington, DC— Developing nations have an opportunity to avoid long-term dependence on fossil fuel-burning infrastructure as they move toward economic stability, even if they are slow to cut carbon ...

Sep

2020

Are China’s pollution remediation efforts making the planet warmer?

By Carnegie HQ

Washington, DC— A 10-year effort by China to improve air quality and reduce pollution-related health risks has caused warming in areas across the northern hemisphere, according to new work published ...

More News

Lab PI

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

Affiliation

Affiliation:

DGE Faculty

Labs:

Caldeira Lab

Download:

CaldeiraCurrentCV20200330.pdf

Websites

Projects

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.
Michael Dioha (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Michael Dioha is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Global Ecology, located at the Stanford University campus. His main research areas include energy system analysis & modelling and socioeconomic development for a sustainable energy transition. Michael develops integrated energy system models to examine the techno-economic implications of alternative energy strategies, and how they might be shaped for a coherent and sustainable energy future.

Before joining the Carnegie Institution for Science, Michael was a Research Analyst at the TERI School of Advanced Studies, New Delhi, where he did research on net-zero emission pathways for India. Beyond academic research, Michael also advocates for innovative approaches that promote just socioeconomic development especially, in Africa. Michael holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Energy & Environment and a BSc in Mechanical Engineering. Outside of work, Michael enjoys playing soccer, running and art.
Lei Duan (Research Associate)
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.
Bill Hayes (Scientific 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.