Inequalities persist in the geosciences. White women and people of color remain under‐represented at all levels of academic faculty, including positions of power such as departmental and institutional leadership. While the proportion of women among geoscience faculty has been cataloged previously, new programs and initiatives aimed at improving diversity, focused on institutional factors that affect equity in the geosciences, necessitate an updated study and a new metric for quantifying the biases that result in under‐representation. We compile a data set of 2,531 tenured and tenure‐track geoscience faculty from 62 universities in the United States to evaluate the proportion of women by rank and discipline. We find that 27% of faculty are women. The fraction of women in the faculty pool decreases with rank, as women comprise 46% of assistant professors, 34% of associate professors, and 19% of full professors. We quantify the attrition of women in terms of a fractionation factor, which describes the rate of loss of women along the tenure track and allows us to move away from the metaphor of the “leaky pipeline.” Efforts to address inequities in institutional culture and biases in promotion and hiring practices over the past few years may provide insight into the recent positive shifts in fractionation factor. Our results suggest a need for 1:1 hiring between men and women to reach gender parity. Due to significant disparities in race, this work is most applicable to white women, and our use of the gender binary does not represent gender diversity in the geosciences.
The Antarctic is characterized by a strong, year-round temperature inversion in the bottom 1 km of the atmosphere: surface temperatures, particularly in the central part of the continent, are colder than atmospheric temperatures just above them (Hudson & Brandt, 2005). As emissions of 2 CO continue to rise due to anthropogenic sources (Peters et al., 2020), the role that greenhouse gases (GHGs) play in local Antarctic radiative balance, where such a temperature inversion is present, are necessary to consider. Diagnosing both the surface and column temperature response to GHGs is important to furthering our understanding of the differing responses of the Antarctic and Arctic to anthropogenic forcing (Manabe & Stouffer, 1980). Observational studies (K. L. Smith & Polvani, 2017) and re-analysis (Sato & Simmonds, 2021) show that there have been small warming trends over the East Antarctic and slightly larger warming trends over the West Antarctic. Previous work has explored the impact of ozone (Chiodo et al., 2017) and Antarctic orography (Singh & Polvani, 2020) on these varying surface temperature responses in the Antarctic. Here we discuss some of the recent work to understand the role of GHGs in surface warming, and why it is important to isolate the impacts of 2 CO . Contrary to 2 CO 's effect at low latitudes, previous work has found that increasing GHG concentrations in the Antarctic results in a negative radiative forcing, or an increase in OLR (Huang et al., 2016;Schmithüsen et al., 2015). This was seen in a two-layer model, line-by-line radiative transfer calculations, and experiments with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) atmospheric model. Based on these findings, a locally negative radiative forcing from increasing 2 CO might be thought to cause surface temperatures in the Antarctic to decrease. However, work investigating a quadrupling of 2 CO (K. L.
Inequalities persist in the geosciences. White women and people of color remain under-represented at all levels of academic faculty, including positions of power such as departmental and institutional leadership. While the proportion of women among geoscience faculty has been catalogued previously, new programs and initiatives aimed at improving diversity, focused on institutional factors that affect equity in the geosciences, necessitate an updated study and a new metric for quantifying the biases that result in under-representation . We compile a dataset of 2,531 tenured and tenure-track geoscience faculty from 62 universities in the United States to evaluate the proportion of women by rank and discipline. We find that 27% of faculty are women. The fraction of women in the faculty pool decreases with rank, as women comprise 46% of assistant professors, 34% of associate professors, and 19% of full professors. We quantify the attrition of women in terms of a fractionation factor, which describes the rate of loss of women along the tenure track and allows us to move away from the metaphor of the 'leaky pipeline'. Efforts to address inequities in institutional culture and biases in promotion and hiring practices over the past few years may provide insight into the recent positive shifts in fractionation factor. Our results suggest a need for 1:1 hiring between men and women to reach gender parity. Due to significant disparities in race, this work is most applicable to white women, and our use of the gender binary does not represent gender diversity in the geosciences.
Belmont County, Ohio is heavily dominated by unconventional oil and gas development that results in high levels of ambient air pollution. Residents here chose to work with a national volunteer network to develop a method of participatory science to answer questions about the association between impact on the health of their community and pollution exposure from the many industrial point sources in the county and surrounding area and river valley. After first directing their questions to the government agencies responsible for permitting and protecting public health, residents noted the lack of detailed data and understanding of the impact of these industries. These residents and environmental advocates are using the resulting science to open a dialogue with the EPA in hopes to ultimately collaboratively develop air quality standards that better protect public health. Results from comparing measurements from a citizen-led participatory low-cost, high-density air pollution sensor network of 35 particulate matter and 25 volatile organic compound sensors against regulatory monitors show low correlations (consistently R2 < 0.55). This network analysis combined with complementary models of emission plumes are revealing the inadequacy of the sparse regulatory air pollution monitoring network in the area, and opening many avenues for public health officials to further verify people’s experiences and act in the interest of residents’ health with enforcement and informed permitting practices. Further, the collaborative best practices developed by this study serve as a launchpad for other community science efforts looking to monitor local air quality in response to industrial growth.
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