Astronomers significantly impact the climate by traveling to conferences, say researchers

In 2019, world journey to worldwide tutorial conferences within the area of astronomy triggered the equal of 42,500 tons of climate-damaging CO₂ emissions. This equates to a median of 1 ton of CO₂ per participant and convention. The total distance lined provides as much as a really astronomical sum: one and a half occasions the space between the Earth and the sun.

This was found by a workforce led by Dr. Andrea Gokus from Washington College in St. Louis (U.S.). The researchers compiled a knowledge set of all 362 identified astronomy conferences in 2019 and the corresponding journey emissions. PD Dr. Volker Ossenkopf-Okada from the College of Cologne’s Institute for Astrophysics contributed to the information evaluation.

The research “Astronomy’s local weather emissions: world journey to scientific conferences in 2019” has now been published in PNAS Nexus.

The authors emphasize the significance of networking in addition to discussing new scientific findings at conferences to advance the sector. Nonetheless, changes can and should be made to cut back the results on the local weather. Examples embrace digital conferences or selecting a convention venue that’s as shut as doable to most members in order that only some members need to take long-distance flights.

It is usually necessary to provide astronomers who’re primarily based far-off from North America and Europe, the place most astronomy conferences happen, the chance to attend the conferences. The authors suggest hybrid codecs and conferences held at a number of places which might be related just about.

“If the 2019 American Astronomical Society assembly in Seattle had been held at 4 world hubs (Seattle and Baltimore within the U.S., Amsterdam within the Netherlands, and Tokyo in Japan), CO₂ emissions may have been lowered by 70 p.c,” defined Gokus.

“Digital and hybrid conference codecs would even be extra inclusive and thus extra environment friendly for our area as a complete, as astronomers from much less prosperous institutes and international locations and people with household duties would now not be excluded from conferences because of the costly and time-consuming journey,” mentioned Ossenkopf-Okada.