Martin Murphy
Senior scientist, Vaisala Inc. - Boulder, Colorado - USABoulder, Colorado - USA
As a freshman / sophomore in atmospheric science, about 30 years ago, I was already freaking out about my carbon footprint before I even got into my major coursework and was convincing friends that we had to start carpooling to school because we were putting too much CO2 into the atmosphere.
In the 30 years since, I’ve completely stopped driving and become a full-time cyclist instead. It was very heartening to read the recent article in Mother Jones about “climate syndrome” and that’s where I learned of this organization. I am thrilled to have learned of its existence.
Mostly related to lightning detection systems, lightning warning, lightning climatology, with lesser contributions to date in Vaisala’s road weather and air quality work.
About 10 years after my PhD I took a series in organic chemistry because I had learned of an organometallic complex that was observed to absorb CO2 from air when the complex was dissolved in acetone, and I was utterly fascinated by that and wondered if there was any possible future in CO2 scrubbing from air (though it now appears that “direct air capture”, as it’s known, is not economically or structurally practical).