In second place of the CoS Science Communication Writing Competition is Wong Minn Lin from the Asian School of the Environment! She wrote about “Lessons in climate change, learned from the past.” Congratulations, Minn Lin!
The year 2019 concluded a decade of consistently rising global temperatures, rapidly retreating ice sheets, and record sea levels – all driven by greenhouse gases produced for the most part by human activities.
Associate Professor Adam Switzer has been selected as the new Permanent Representative of Singapore to the Coordinating Committee for Geosciences Programmes in East and Southeast Asia (CCOP).
The Asian monsoon is the world’s largest weather system and affects the lives and livelihoods of about half the world’s population. Current human-induced climate change is affecting the Asian monsoon and causing it to change in various ways, with potentially huge socioeconomic consequences.
Last month, the ASE had the pleasure of hosting Professor Sandra Diaz from the University of Cordoba, Argentina, for a week. Prof Diaz is Co-chair of the IBPES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), which stood behind the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services last year.
Congratulations to Asst Prof Tong Ping, who has been awarded an MOE Tier 2 grant! Asst Prof Ping is jointly employed by ASE and SPMS, and his research spans several disciplines, as he uses skills from math and computing to solve problems in geophysics and earth science.
The sea-level of the Indian Ocean is rising at a rate and magnitude nearly twice the global average, but insufficient data records have stood in the way of understanding this strong response to climate. In a study recently published in Nature Geoscience, ASE/EOS researchers Dr Kyle Morgan, Research Assistant Ke Lin, A/P Xianfeng Wang and Keven Roy together with colleagues from Canada, Australia and New Zealand tracked relative sea level change on coral atoll islands in the Maldives over the past two millennia.
The inaugural CoS Science Communication Writing Competition was held from 11 Nov 2019 to 10 Jan 2020. We received many submissions, and a panel of judges consisting of faculty from CoS judged the entries and shortlisted the winners! First up, winner of the Merit Prize, Soon Kit Ying from the Asian School of the Environment! She wrote about “Reflecting on Our Sea Level – The Use of GNSS-Interferometric Reflectometry to Study Sea-level Trends.” Congratulations, Kit Ying!
And the winners from College of Science are…
It is hard to underestimate the importance of the Asian monsoon; the world’s largest weather system, affecting almost half of the world’s population, and the base of food security and water supply in Southeast Asia, large parts of China and beyond. With climate change comes more frequent high intensity downpours during the wet season, and the monsoon season also becomes more difficult to predict.