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About ClimateEd Hub

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Our Mission

Empowering the next generation with effective climate education to create a sustainable future.

The Climate Ed Hub Team

andrea weinberg
sarah suloff
raj
andrea weinberg

Andrea Weinberg

Associate Professor

Andrea Weinberg is an associate professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College in the division of teacher preparation. She is an esteemed expert in the field of teacher education, with a particular emphasis on preparing educators to navigate the challenges of a climate-affected world.

sarah suloff

Sarah Suloff

Research Project Manager,

High-achieving learning specialist committed to promoting a sense of wonder, achievement, and empowerment within learning communities. High-achieving learning specialist committed to promoting a sense of wonder, achievement, and empowerment within learning communities.

raj

Rajul Pandya

Executive Director and Professor of Practice

Pandya joined Arizona State University as the Fulton Presidential Professor of Practice in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and Executive Director of the Global Futures Education Lab in 2024. Before that he served as the Vice-President of Community Science and founding Director of the Thriving Earth Exchange at the American Geophysical Union.

Why the Lorentz Attractor?

What's plotted in the evolving conditions in the atmosphere, or at least the very simplified version of the atmosphere. Dots appearing all over the place would indicate that this process was completely random: weather would be impossible to predict and we wouldn't have a recognizable climate – just random variation. Tracing out a repeating curve would indicate that our atmosphere moves predictably through certain conditions. Weather would be easy to predict, even years ahead, in the same way we can predict a planet's position years from now using orbits. What we actually have, as shown by the Lorenz attractor, is something in between, the atmosphere has infinite possibilities, they aren't random but they aren't precisely predictable. They connect to what came before and they cluster around a few modes, but they don't repeat themselves exactly and they can suddenly switch from one mode to another.

The Lorenz attractor was a surprise. Before this, scientists thought the atmosphere could be predictable, if we could get perfect measurements. The Lorenz attractor showed us that even simple processes in the atmosphere produce complex, evolving behaviors; that perfect predictions are impossible, and that tiny changes now can grow into big changes later. The Lorenz attractor looks like a butterfly. The butterfly effect is the name given to small disturbances that grow into something bigger: a butterfly flapping its wings in Africa creates a disturbance that grows into a hurricane in the Gulf. Watching the Lorenz curve trace out in time you see it circles around one lobe of the butterfly, then suddenly switches to another lobe. Tipping points are the names given to these sudden transitions from one lobe to the other. In the Lorenz attractor the lobes switch back and forth a lot and cross the tipping point, in our real atmosphere the lobes are more stable and big switches are rare. There is evidence that changes humans are making in the atmosphere could trigger tipping points in the real atmosphere and push it into another mode.

Just as the Lorentz Attractor shows beauty in chaos, we believe there's beauty in understanding and addressing climate challenges through knowledge and action.