The climate would be a much easier system to study if there was only one thing going on at a time including the Sun, greenhouse gas emissions, or a big volcano going off. Since different external drivers ("forcings") happen independently and many of them happen at the same time, and while it is still a good approximation to say that the whole is the sum of the parts, the non-linearities loom larger. That means in the future we are going to need to be more careful in judging the different drivers in climate change and using chemistry as a key tool to discern how a number of drivers all interacting together explain the climate’s erratic journey.

Chemistry and the climate's backseat drivers

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.