Yang Song's DOE Grant to Transform Climate Projections with Microbial Data and Artificial Intelligence
Original article, Hydrologists to transform climate projections with microbial data and artificial intelligence," published by UA News on Nov 19, 2024. You can listen to the article here. An excerpt from the article follows.
¤
Soil plays a crucial role in regulating Earth's carbon cycle. As the largest terrestrial carbon sink, soil has the potential to either mitigate or exacerbate climate change, depending on how it is managed.
The Department of Energy has awarded the University of Arizona $610,166 as part of the department's $8 million initiative to support research to improve climate models. The U of A project, one of 13 selected nationwide, seeks to revolutionize the understanding of how soil microbes influence climate change. This could potentially address a major uncertainty in current global climate projections.
Researchers from the university’s Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences (HAS) will combine biological and environmental data with artificial intelligence to enhance the Department of Energy's Energy Exascale Earth System Model. Providing crucial insights into future climate scenarios, E3SM is a state-of-the-art climate model designed to simulate Earth's climate system with high resolution and advanced physics. The U of A project focuses on improving projections of how soil affects climate at a global scale.
"This project represents a significant step forward in climate science," said project principal investigator Yang Song, assistant professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences and a faculty member in the university's Ecosystem Genomics Graduate Interdisciplinary Program. "By integrating detailed biological and environmental data and AI into E3SM, we're opening new frontiers in understanding and predicting climate change."
The research addresses the complex role of soil microbes in global carbon cycle and greenhouse gas emissions. Despite their crucial impact on climate, these microscopic communities have long been a challenge to study and incorporate into climate models.
The main driver controlling greenhouse gas emissions from soil is the microbial community, Song said. However, due to their microscopic size and complexity, understanding their role has been challenging until recent biotechnological advancements.
Congratulations, Yang Song, on being a part of this new cutting edge research effort to understand our changing climate.