Professor Dara Entekhabi is a word-renowned Iranian scholar of climatology. He is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has won several international awards for his academic breakthroughs and discoveries in the field of climatology and environmental engineering including the National Science Foundation (NSF) Presidential Young Investigator in 1991, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Cav. Arturo Parisatti Prize in 1994, and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Macelwane Young Scientist Medal.

AT: Let’s start with a general question, which the Iranian readers will be eager to know the answer to. Does your nationality have any impact on your treatment at MIT? Do you try to obscure your nationality in order to keep a low profile?

DE: Thank you for the opportunity to share some personal experiences and impressions with your readers. As you indicate I have been working in the United States for the last twenty years as an Iranian national. I think it is very important to make colleagues and co-workers recognize my Iran national origin. The Iranian science community should of course have a strong base within Iran but it also needs to be represented on the international scene. We now live in a globalized community where many nationalities are evident in leadership positions of major ventures and projects. The intellectual capital and resourcefulness of the Iranian people should be evident on this international scene. So in response to your question, I recognize that my Iranian nationality should go hand-in-hand with what I do, especially on international projects.

AT: We hear a lot of news these days about the extinction of various species of plants and animals and the degradation of the environment. How much is this the fault of humankind?

DE: There is an alarming increase in the extinction of species and loss of biodiversity. Some of it is due to loss of habitat (land use change). Some of it is due to accumulation of chemicals introduced by humans. These chemicals accumulate as they go up the food chain. Some of it is due to un-sustainable resource allocation for human use and consumption. Extinction of species is tragic in itself because it represents a permanent loss. But there is a dimension of this problem that affects human welfare and health. Loss of biodiversity reduces the resilience of ecosystems and makes them more susceptible to collapse and invasive species. Biodiversity is a important aspect of maintain ecosystem health. Agricultural ecosystems, lands used for food production and water supply, and all managed ecosystems do need biodiversity across species (from microbes to plants to animals). The chemical cycling in ecosystems is linked to biodiversity.

AT: One of your research areas is winter atmosphere and its predictability. Would you please elaborate on this subject a bit more.

DE: Tropical climate prediction has advanced during the last two decades. It is based on increased observations and modeling capability. Tropical oceans and the atmosphere are very closely linked which makes them predictable. Outside of tropics (higher latitudes) and especially in winter the atmosphere is a lot more turbulent. It has limits to prediction. Understanding and predicting mid-latitude (extra-tropical) climate is a challenge. Several months ahead prediction in these latitudes and in winter season has practical value. Energy demand is related to it. During the last five years I have been working on the physical mechanisms that determine the winter time climate regime. Snow turns out to be a big factor because the solar reflectivity of snow and bare ground are very different. When there is an early snow cover anomaly, the difference in surface heating is large. This affects the atmospheric turbulence that reaches into the stratosphere. We are making predictions of winter climate that energy companies use for planning.

AT: The Kyoto Protocol is the most substantial treaty so far to try to abate climate change. The USA has not ratified it, even though it’s the largest emitter of CO2 and greenhouse gases in the world. What do you make of this?

DE: The US government policy on greenhouse gas emissions has been a disaster during the last eight years. At first the government policy was denial of link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Faced with overwhelming scientific evidence the government finally acknowledged the problem. Over the last eight years the US has lost valuable time in investing in clean energy technologies and increasing energy use efficiency. Fossil fuel companies especially oil companies have had a lot of influence on US fuel policy during last eight years. The new administration has very different policies on the topic.

AT: There is not much likeihood that industrialization can be slowed down, but many countries are suffering from the disadvantages of industrialization and thus losing their jungles, forests and natural resources. Where is our responsibility?

DE: Industrialization and urbanization should not be equated with environmental damage. In fact there is good opportunity to make more efficient uses of resources and reduce waste. The key is that any new manufacturing process or urban development should take into account the full life-cycle of material flows. The environmental impacts of raw material extraction and transport, of manufacturing, of product distribution, of consumption and of waste disposal should all be considered at once. This is called cradle-to-grave analysis. Where there is recycling it is often called cradle-to-cradle. If done right there is no need to consider industrialization and the environment as conflicting.

AT: Another environmental problem today is the pollution of the seas and oceans, which are polluted by many different countries.

DE: That is one of the aspects of the environment. The environment does not stop at international borders. To manage the environment we often have to reach across shared borders. Sometimes it is regional like in the Caspian Sea or Persian Gulf. Sometimes it is global like greenhouse gas emissions.

AT: Some climate specialists say that the underdeveloped countries have a small share in the responsibility for climate change because they do not have large-scale industrial projects. Can we accept such a notion, and if so, should we keep them underdeveloped perpetually in order to avoid the expansion of pollution?

DE: I do not agree with notion that human welfare in some countries should be kept at low level so they do not become industrialized and big consumers of energy. The opposite, we should aim for increase human welfare in the context of environmental health. Developing countries can learn from the lessons of western industrial age and industrialization to take a better path towards economic development. The industrialized countries have made a lot of mistakes along their development especially regarding the environment. We can learn those lessons and not repeat them. We do not have to follow the same path towards the end. Take the example of telephones. Industrial countries installed copper wire networks, then installed fiber optics, then cellular networks. One would not expect a undeveloped country to build its first telephone network using low-bandwidth copper wire. The lesson is learned and a cellular network is installed.

AT: Would you please elaborate on the latest improvements and discoveries in the field of weather prediction and the degree of accuracy which they provide?

DE: Weather prediction is done through models of the atmospheric fluid flow including energy and water processes. At the same time the atmosphere is a chaotic fluid. This means that a small difference in the initial condition of two parallel predictions will take different trajectories over time. So beside powerful models the key issue is how good the numerical weather model is initialized compared to the parallel truth. Errors in the initial conditions lead to lesser quality forecasts. During the last decade or so there is great increase in the amount of satellite data available for weather model initialization. There is also great cooperation among countries in sharing data. Weather prediction is a global problem and cooperation among countries in this regard is recognized to be to the benefit of everyone.

AT: What are the most concerning challenges, for you and your colleagues, in the terms of the global climate transformation?

DE: Global warming is certainly among the top problems. The greenhouse gases that are added to the atmosphere because of human fossil fuel consumption do not get absorbed for hundreds of years. Our denial about the problem over the last decades when we learned scientifically about the consequences means that we are already late. We need to catch up. We know well how greenhouse gases affect global temperatures. That is very clear and known for over 150 years. What we do not know is the effect on the water cycle, water resources, and biosphere. That is a big scientific challenge today.

Another challenge is the other cause of global change which is as dramatic (if not more dramatic) than greenhouse gases. Humans have changed the land cover and vegetation across the globe. This releases as much greenhouse gases as burning fossil fuels. We need to manage our impact on the environment through better food production and land use practices. The challenge is model the environment such that human influence on it is part of the model. Because that is the fact, humans are huge agents of environmental change and biogeochemical cycles.

AT: Based on your observations and experiments have there been drastic changes in amounts of rainfall worldwide?

DE: Precipitation has a lot of natural variability so detecting trends over the short periods when instrument records are available is very difficult. But one thing that definitely has changed is runoff and streamflow from precipitation. We have changed the land cover and even urbanized major portions of the environment especially where there is concentrated population. Runoff will change by very large factors (like half or twice depending on land use change). So a few percent change in precipitation may not be the issue. We see catastrophic losses due to floods and droughts these days. This is mostly because increasing populations and more concentrated populations (like in Bangaladesh or West Africa) are more vulnerable to flooding or drought.

AT: Would you please talk a bit about the numerous awards which you have been given, specially the Macelwane Young Scientist Medal?

DE: I have been fortunate that colleagues have recognized my efforts but the best prize of all is to see students graduate and have successful and fulfilling careers.

AT: And for the last question, we are eager to know whether you have ever focused your studies, research papers or experiments on Iran and its atmosphere, environment etc?

DE: I have recently focused on the Caspian Sea in terms of its climate variability, ecosystem health, and environmental quality. It is a very sensitive region because it is a closed basin There is a lack of coordination among the neighboring countries in managing this fragile system. I really hope that a project can be initiated that involves Iranian scientists in Iran institutions as well as institutions world-wide. This can serve as a model for work on other aspects of the environment across Iran. Installing larger and more dense networks for Caspian Sea and land environment monitoring, collection and analysis of satellite data and modeling the physics and chemistry would be the first steps.

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