海角大神

Lenka Novak tried to avoid the title. 鈥淚 never introduced myself as a climate modeler, always as a meteorologist,鈥� says the Czech-born researcher at the California Institute of Technology.听

There was, she says, a certain 鈥渟tigma鈥� about climate modelers as more steeped in computer machinations than in the theoretical foundations of science. And there was the political thing:

鈥淕oing to social events, if I said, I鈥檓 a climate scientist, then people would start asking me, 鈥業s climate change real?鈥欌�� For scientists, that鈥檚 like asking if the Earth really is round. 鈥淚t gets very tiresome.鈥�

At age 30, Ms. Novak is now part of a wave of younger researchers who have been drawn into climate modeling. She is a 鈥減ostdoc鈥� at Caltech, working on the Climate Modeling Alliance (CliMA).

She admits she was hesitant to join the team when she was invited to Caltech three years ago after earning a doctorate in England. 鈥淚t seemed high risk,鈥� she says of the experimental project, and she was intent on producing scholarly papers to climb up the academic ladder. 听

But she soon was inspired by the enthusiasm of the researchers around her, and by their boldness in trying something new.

鈥淚鈥檇 much rather do something high risk and feel like it鈥檚 leading to something really impactful,鈥� she says. 鈥淏efore I came, I did have this niggling feeling that following the classical, traditional route of an academic wasn鈥檛 quite 鈥榠t.鈥� We were all doing incremental research. There would be 10 or 20 people who would really care.

鈥淏ut now, I feel that CliMA has opened a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to techniques.鈥� She imagines a future when 鈥渆veryone will be able to download an app on their phone and see the probability of, for example, flooding in their area. And they can make decisions based on that.鈥�

Read about Ms. Novak's work on an ambitious effort to build a new climate model that could one day听one day听put climate prediction in the palm of your hand.听听