• SFU Climate Research Lab

MSc. student Christine Leclerc's poster "Variability of headwater stream network extent is highly sensitive to projected impacts of climate change" was added to an exhibit on the 7th floor of the Bennett Library at SFU's Burnaby campus as part of a joint initiative of the Research Commons, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, and Office of the Vice-President, Research and International. The poster will also be added to SFU Summit.

Lab members Rachel Chimuka, Alexander MacIsaac and Alexander Koch presented their research virtually during the “Collaborative Earth System Modelling in Canada” sessions of the 56th Annual Canadian Meteorology and Oceanography Society Congress.

M.Sc. student, Christine Leclerc will host a workshop titled "Earth’s Energy-Balance: A Climate Modelling Workshop" at the 2022 Burnaby Festival of Learning. The workshop will provide an introduction to some of the key concepts that make up our understanding of the Earth’s energy balance, including electromagnetic radiation, blackbodies, and thermal electromagnetic radiation.

Ph.D. student, Rachel Chimuka, was a panelist at Let's Talk Science's Earth Week Climate Change Panel organized to educate grade 7-11 students on climate change and its impacts, and encourage them to take action.

M.Sc. student, Christine Leclerc, was recently featured in Chatelaine’s article “Are Individual Carbon Offsets Really Worth Buying?".

Group leader, Kirsten Zickfeld, gave an SFU Science Nobel Prize Lecture, in which she highlighted the contributions of 2021 Physics Nobel Price winners Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann to the field of climate modelling, and discussed the role climate models have played in understanding an addressing the climate crisis.

Lab director, Kirsten Zickfeld, recently published a paper with Ph.D. student, Alex MacIsaac and former lab members, Sabine Mathesius and Claude-Michel Nzotungicimpaye, on “Temporary nature-based carbon removal can lower peak warming in a well-below 2 °C scenario” in the Nature Communications Earth and Environment Journal. You can view the article here. This research was also mentioned in an article by The Conversation Canada.

Group leader, Kirsten Zickfeld, gave a C2G (Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative) seminar about CDR in the IPCC WGI report. The seminar provided audiences with expert overviews of how the IPCC AR6 Working Group-I report addresses CDR and SRM.

Ph.D. student Rachel Chimuka presented her poster on the asymmetry in land carbon cycle feedbacks under positive and negative CO emissions at the 2021 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.

Congratulations to Ph.D. student, Rachel Chimuka, who was  awarded the U.S. Carbon Cycle Program Leadership Award for her research contribution and leadership in the field of carbon cycle science.

Ph.D. student Rachel Chimuka presented her poster on land carbon cycle feedbacks under negative CO2  emissions at the 2021 Graduate Climate Conference.

Lab director, Kirsten Zickfeld, was recently featured in CBC’s “How shaving half a degree off global warming targets could lessen the effects of climate change” article and video.

Former lab member, Claude-Michel Nzotungicimpaye, recently published his article “WETMETH 1.0: a new wetland methane model for implementation in Earth system models” in the Geoscientific Model Development Journal. You can view the article here.

Congratulations to lab members Chloe Papalazarou, Rachel Chimuka and Christine Leclerc, who convocated today! Chloe will move on to work as a Geospatial Analyst at Sparkgeo, whilst Rachel and Christine will stay in the lab and pursue further studies.

Welcome to new M.Sc. student, Takuma Mihara! Takuma will research the effects of passing thresholds in the climate system such as permafrost melt or ice sheet disintegration.

Welcome to new M.Sc. student, Christine Leclerc! Christine’s research will focus on quantifying the impact of afforestation/reforestation on the water cycle and planetary albedo.

On August 9 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel (IPCC) released the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Lab director, Kirsten Zickfeld, was lead author of Chapter 5: Global carbon and other biogeochemical cycles and feedbacks.

Lab director, Kirsten Zickfeld, recently published a paper with former lab members, Deven Azevedo and Sabine Mathesius, on “Asymmetry in the climate-carbon cycle response to positive and negative CO2 emissions” in the Nature Climate Change Journal. You can view the article here.

Congratulations to Chloe Papalazarou who defended her MSc. thesis on “Investigating the Dependence of the Effectiveness of Carbon Dioxide Removal on the Amount and Rate of Removal”. Well done, Chloe!

Congratulations to Rachel Chimuka who defended her MSc. thesis on “Quantifying Carbon Cycle Feedbacks under Negative CO2 Emissions”. Great job, Rachel!

Prospective students

The Climate Research Lab in the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), led by Dr. Kirsten Zickfeld, is seeking Master’s and Doctoral students interested in pursuing research on climate change using Earth System models