Sensing Change: Kenneth Davis

This interview was conducted as part of the Institute’s yearlong Sensing Change initiative exploring the interconnections between art, science, and our changing environment.

Kenneth J. Davis is a professor in the Department of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. His work bridges physics, instrumentation, chemistry, data analysis, and meteorology: in short, all the topics required to understand the complexity of Earth’s atmosphere. 

Do we have enough of an understanding of how the climate system works to make useful predictions and projections?

— Kenneth Davis

Active in climate-change research since the 1980s, Davis specifically focuses on how Earth’s surface and its atmosphere interact. What environmental factors will govern future concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide? How do ecosystem processes interact with boundary-layer (the lowest part of the atmosphere) turbulence to alter climate and weather? Davis’s collaborative fieldwork spans new technologies and atmospheric models to uncover answers to these questions.

Learn more about Davis and his worldwide research:

• INFLUX (INdianapolis FLUX)
  
  
• “Ring 2”:  High-precision, high-accuracy CO₂ mixing ratio measurements in support of the North American Carbon Program Mid Continent Intensive
  
  
• ChEAS: Chequamegon Ecosystem Atmosphere Study
  
  
• North American Carbon Program