The University of Michigan is leading research, analyzing new technologies, and convening and expanding programs and partnerships around critical topics pertaining to climate and energy.
From assessing climate resilience strategies for the Great Lakes region to spearheading progress in alternative and renewable fuel sources, U-M researchers are working to elevate clean, sustainable, and equitable solutions across an array of disciplines. Some of our key initiatives in climate and energy include: the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Program, the Global CO2 Initiative, and the Urban Energy Justice Lab (UEJ). Find U-M experts in sustainability and environmental science, across fields and academic units.
An international team of climate scientists, including two from U-M, suggests that researchers using numerical models to predict future climate change should include simulations of past climates when evaluating model performance. Unlike historic climate records, which typically only go back a century or two, paleoclimates cover a vastly broader range of climatic conditions that can inform climate models in ways historic data cannot.
A team of scientists has nailed down the temperature at the peak of the last ice age, a time known as the Last Glacial Maximum, to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit. Their findings allow climate scientists to better understand the relationship between today’s rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide—a major greenhouse gas—and average global temperature.
Over the past several decades, it has appeared that cold-climate forests at high latitudes have become more effective carbon sinks as rising temperatures and higher CO2 levels have made them more productive. But a new UM-led study casts additional uncertainty on whether those ecosystems will continue to absorb carbon as they become hotter and drier.
Asian carp and the trillions of quagga mussels that carpet the bottom of Lake Michigan would compete for the same food—algae and other types of plankton. Some Great Lakes researchers have suggested that the fingernail-size mollusks could help prevent the invasive fish from gaining a foothold.
Scientists estimate that 5-15 percent of the carbon stored in surface permafrost soils could be emitted as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by 2100, given the current trajectory of global warming. This emission, spurred by microbial action, could lead to 0.3 to 0.4 degrees Celsius of additional global warming.
A new study from U-M climate researchers concludes that some of the latest-generation climate models may be overly sensitive to carbon dioxide increases and therefore project future warming that is unrealistically high.
