and remote sensing. “Residents know more about their own neighborhood than anyone else. Using CRIS, we can harvest information to build a system that offers two-way communication between community members and policymakers. That way, policymakers are not just handing out policies – they are able to develop policies using information collected from the community they intend to benefit.”
PERMAFROST THAWING INCREASES MERCURY POLLUTION The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average. As a result, permafrost – so called because it is meant to remain frozen for at least two consecutive years – is thawing at a record pace. That could mean trouble for fish in Alaska’s Yukon River and wildlife that depend on those species for survival. If greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced, the concentration of mercury in fish in the Yukon River may exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury criterion by 2050, according to a paper co-authored by Yasin Elshorbany, assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry and climate change at USF’s St. Petersburg campus. Published this year in the journal Nature Communications, the report estimates that by 2200 levels of mercury emitted into the atmosphere annually by thawing permafrost could compare with current global human-caused emissions. In February, iCAR’s Community Resiliency Information System (CRIS) was awarded a $50,000 grant through AT&T’s Climate Resiliency Community Challenge. USF’s St. Petersburg campus was one of five institutions in the southeastern United States to receive the grant. Designed to “make smart cities smarter,” CRIS uses citizen engagement and crowdsourced data to gain insights on the local consequences of climate change. The system allows residents to input data related to issues such as flooding and power outages, which can then be used by policy makers and neighborhood leaders to make decisions about policy and resource allocation. The data also allows emergency managers to identify areas with concentrations of people who need transportation assistance or are reliant on power for medical needs. “Our goal with CRIS is to gather information and intelligence from the people,” said Dixon, executive director of iCAR and professor of geographic information systems
USF ST. PETERSBURG CAMPUS
“The thaw of permafrost due to climate change releases not only carbon emissions but also mercury,” said Elshorbany. Governments must comply with the emissions targets of two degrees Celsius set by the Paris Accord, “otherwise, under a high-emissions scenario, a significant portion of mercury will be released to the environment and it will continue for hundreds of years.”
Residents know more about their own neighborhood than anyone else. Using CRIS, we can build a system that offers two-way communication between community members and policymakers.
Led by Elshorbany, the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Laboratory is using funds from several federal and internal grants addressing atmospheric chemistry and climate issues through state-of-the-art in-situ measurements, remote sensing and 3D modeling approaches. Elshorbany and his team hope to unlock the secrets of climate change in order to reduce its impacts.
FLOOD AWARENESS SURVEY FINDS RESIDENTS UNDERESTIMATE RISK Despite years of extreme weather events fueled by climate change, consumers significantly underestimate their risk level of
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