Colombian climate scientist Juliana Arbelaez Gaviria Global Change Research Institute in the Czech … [+]
JULIANA ARBELAEZ GAVIRIA
At 18-years-old, Juliana Arbelaez was representing Colombia in competitive artistic swimming, but is now based in the Czech Republic using computer modeling to gauge the impacts of climate change. She also helps to advocate for women in STEM careers.
Arbelaez, who is now based at the Czech Academy of Sciences, says that her models focus on the impact of climate change on water systems, land transformation, energy and agriculture.
“In the climate change community there are scientists that have been working for 30 years gathering data that can be used in the models,” she says, “We are now using data points from satellites, from marine sources, from farm data, both at the national and regional level.”
She says that unfortunately, the records from the Global South aren’t as complete. “The records just don’t go back at far as they do in Europe, for example.”
Despite that, these models are crucial to the future of Global South countries.
“In the Global South, the water resources are under much stress,” she says, “The water is in the south, so its important to know what are going to be the stresses and adaption strategies.”
Hopefully, Arbelaez says, modeling funded in the north can help to predict outcomes elsewhere.
“The idea is that all these data points are transparent and accessible to the whole world,” she says, “Almost everything is open source.”
Swimmer to Engineer to Climate Modeler
Arbelaez grew up in Medellin, Colombia, attending private school and having the opportunity to compete nationally in artistic swimming.
“My parents are doctors and they focused on giving me a good education, we traveled and they supported all my artistic and personal growth.”
At high school, she enjoyed physics and environmental themes, so she decided to retire from swimming to pursue university.
After a petroleum engineering degree and a post-graduate degree in environmental modeling, Arbelaez secured a post as a research assistant in the Czech Republic.
Arbelaez says that in the field of climate, women and those in the Global South are going to bear the brunt of climate change.
“The global south is the part of the planet least prepared for climate change, but it has a big part to play in the stability of the planet,” she says, adding that climate change will lead to winner and losers, not just geographically, but also socio-economically.
Role of Women
Arbelaez says that even within the climate change research community, there remain cultural and gender gaps.
“This has to change,” she says, “Every Sunday on Instagram, I interview a different women in STEM, but unfortunately many of them are outside of Colombia.”
She says that for women in Latin America, representation remains a problem.
“I never had a women to admire when I was doing my undergrad, there was only one female teacher,” she says, “To lift representation is really important and it is also important to create safe space for women to advance in the field.”
But for change to happen, there needs to more than representation.
“There has to be political will to put more focus on closing the gaps in terms of legislation that help the women to keep going in their careers, for example maternity leave,” she says.
Brno, Moravia, Czech Republic, where Juliana Arbelaez Gaviria is based.
getty
Another expatriate Colombian studying climate change is limnologist Alejandra Rodríguez-Abaunza.
Based in Mexico, she looks at fossils of tiny crustaceans to gain a better understanding of climate change over time and how to better manage water resources in the region.
