Deep in the Congolese rainforest stands a tower 57 metres high that is helping in the fight against climate change. Since October 2020, the Ghent University climate tower has been measuring both the amount of CO2 captured and stored by the tropical rainforest and the levels of water exchange between the forest and the atmosphere.
Helena Van Tichelen was in secondary school when the school strikes and marches around climate change erupted. Years later, she has not lost the commitment she picked up then. In mid-November, she put aside the lessons and courses of her third bachelor in bioengineering to travel to Egypt for the largest climate conference in the world: COP27.
The last years’ drought has caused stress in trees. Some have stopped growing; others have shed their foliage. Sometimes entire forests have perished. The bioengineers at the Department of Environment (Faculty of Bioscience Engineering) are crossing national borders to try to find out the causes of the problems effecting trees globally and working on a type of forest that can cope with climate change.
Will we soon be wearing smart textiles that can adapt to the heat? Professor Lieva Van Langenhove of the Department of Materials, Textiles and Chemical Process Engineering explains how that could work.
Are we likely to face a greater number of intense storms in the summer, due to climate change? Yet why does it rain harder when the temperature rises? That seems counter-intuitive, but not at all, says Steven Caluwaerts, climatologist at Ghent University and the KMI (Royal Meteorological Institute).
As the climate changes we must increasingly account for heavy rainfall and the flooding this causes. Having said that, there is already lots of data available to predict future flooding and potential damage. Yet our approach is not always aligned with this data.
In Glasgow, from 31 October to 12 November, the 26th Climate Conference will take place. For twelve days, 196 countries will be examining – yet again - climate change and how we should tackle it. How unequivocal are scientists on the climate issue? And to what extent does the political agenda take climate science into account?
“Climate change is a global problem. But if you really want to know its impact, you have to have local data.” So say meteorologist Steven Caluwaerts and bioengineer Pieter De Frenne. They both do research on microclimates, albeit with a different starting point. “Actually, we are very complementary. We should meet more often!”
As soon as the pandemic is over, the climate crisis will come back into focus. “We have to aim for zero CO2 emissions. Not ‘a bit less’, but zero”, says philosopher of science Maarten Boudry. And that requires a global debate, moving away from the oversimplified visions that currently dominate the debate.
It turns out that large forests are not the only woodland to contribute to combatting climate change. In fact, small woods are important too, and far more than we once believed. Small areas of woodland actually take in proportionately more carbon than their larger relations. This means it is really important to take care of such areas, and plant more of them.
