Paola Arias Explained

Paola Andrea Arias Gómez is a climate scientist and professor at the Environmental School of the University of Antioquia (Colombia).^[1] Her research includes different aspects of climate change and hydroclimate modeling in Colombia and South America. Arias is the first Colombian woman to be selected as an author for an IPCC report,^{[2] [3]} participating as lead author for Working Group I of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.^[4]

Career

Arias has a BS in civil engineering and an MSc in hydric resources from the National University of Colombia. In 2008 she went on to obtain a second MSc in earth and atmospheric sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a thesis titled "Changes in cloudiness over tropical land during the last decades and its link to global climate change".^[5] In 2011, Arias obtained a PhD in geological sciences from the University of Texas under the guidance of Rong Fu, with a dissertation titled "Climate variability over the American monsoon and Amazonian regions during the last decades".^{[6] [7]} She joined the department of geophysics at the University of Chile as a postdoctoral researcher for the Center of Excellence for Research on Climate and Resilience,^[8] where Arias continued her work on American monsoon systems.^[9]

Arias is a professor at the University of Antioquia and leads the university's Environmental School, where she is also associated to the Environmental Engineering and Management Research Group.^[10] She participated in the TED independent event "TEDxBogotaMujeres",^[11] where she talked about the climate crisis.

Memberships

• Working Group I of the IPCC, where she contributed to the chapter on water cycle changes of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.^[12]
• GEWEX Hydroclimatology Panel (GHP),^[13] a group that works to understand the physical, social and economical aspects of hydroclimate variations.^[14]
• World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), specifically the "WCRP Lighthouse Activity: My Climate Risk" group,^[15] which focuses on assessing climate change information and its effective delivery at a local scale.^[16]
• Programa Hidrológico Intergubernamental - Grupo de trabajo del PHI-LAC sobre la hidrogeomorfología de la cuenca Andino – Amazónica (Intergovernmental Hydrological Program - PHI-LAC working group on the hydrogeomorphology of the Andean-Amazon basin),^[17] which aims to research water-related disasters and hydrological changes, to support communities in the region.^[18]

Selected publications

Journals

• Rong Fu, Lei Yin, Wenhong Li, Paola A. Arias, Robert E. Dickinson, Lei Huang, Sudip Chakraborty, Katia Fernandes, Brant Liebmann, Rosie Fisher, Ranga B. Myneni. 2013. Increased dry-season length over southern Amazonia in recent decades and its implication for future climate projection Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; 2013: 110(45): 18110–18115. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302584110
• Germán Poveda, Oscar J. Mesa, Luis F. Salazar, Paola A. Arias, Hernán A. Moreno, Sara C. Vieira, Paula A. Agudelo, Vladimir G. Toro, J. Felipe Alvarez. 2005. The diurnal cycle of precipitation in the tropical Andes of Colombia. Monthly Weather Review; 133(1), 228–240. DOI: 10.1175/MWR-2853.1
• Germán Poveda, Jaime I. Vélez, Oscar J. Mesa, Adriana Cuartas, Janet Barco, Ricardo I. Mantilla, John F. Mejía, Carlos D. Hoyos, Jorge M. Ramírez, Lina I. Ceballos, Manuel D. Zuluaga, Paola A. Arias, Blanca A Botero, María I Montoya, Juan D. Giraldo, Diana I Quevedo. 2007. Linking long-term water balances and statistical scaling to estimate river flows along the drainage network of Colombia. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering; 12(1): 4–13. DOI: 10.1061/(asce)1084-0699(2007)12:1(4)
• Paola A. Arias, J. Alejandro Martínez, Sara C. Vieira. 2015. Moisture sources to the 2010–2012 anomalous wet season in northern South America. Climate Dynamics; 45: 2861–2884. DOI: 10.1007/s00382-015-2511-7

Reports

• Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R. P. Allan, P. A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T. Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, O. Zolina. 2021. Water Cycle Changes. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press.
• Arias, P. A., N. Bellouin, E. Coppola, R. G. Jones, G. Krinner, J. Marotzke, V. Naik, M. D. Palmer, G-K. Plattner, J. Rogelj, M. Rojas, J. Sillmann, T. Storelvmo, P. W. Thorne, B. Trewin, K. Achuta Rao, B. Adhikary, R. P. Allan, K. Armour, G. Bala, R. Barimalala, S. Berger, J. G. Canadell, C. Cassou, A. Cherchi, W. Collins, W. D. Collins, S. L. Connors, S. Corti, F. Cruz, F. J. Dentener, C. Dereczynski, A. Di Luca, A. Diongue Niang, F. J. Doblas-Reyes, A. Dosio, H. Douville, F. Engelbrecht, V. Eyring, E. Fischer, P. Forster, B. Fox-Kemper, J. S. Fuglestvedt, J. C. Fyfe, N. P. Gillett, L. Goldfarb, I. Gorodetskaya, J. M. Gutierrez, R. Hamdi, E. Hawkins, H. T. Hewitt, P. Hope, A. S. Islam, C. Jones, D. S. Kaufman, R. E. Kopp, Y. Kosaka, J. Kossin, S. Krakovska, J-Y. Lee, J. Li, T. Mauritsen, T. K. Maycock, M. Meinshausen, S-K. Min, P. M. S. Monteiro, T. Ngo-Duc, F. Otto, I. Pinto, A. Pirani, K. Raghavan, R. Ranasinghe, A. C. Ruane, L. Ruiz, J-B. Sallée, B. H. Samset, S. Sathyendranath, S. I. Seneviratne, A. A. Sörensson, S. Szopa, I. Takayabu, A-M. Treguier, B. van den Hurk, R. Vautard, K. von Schuckmann, S. Zaehle, X. Zhang, K. Zickfeld. 2021. Technical Summary. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press

External links

• TEDxBogotaMujeres - Pensar desde nosotros para generar un cambio | Paola Arias

Notes and References

1. News: Paola Arias: una vida para estudiar el cambio climático. Personajes del año 2021. El Espectador. Diego. Quinceno. 4 December 2021.
2. Web site: Profesora de la Facultad de Ingeniería, primera mujer colombiana que participará en el informe de la ONU sobre cambio climático. 10 August 2021. Universidad de Antioquia. es.
3. Web site: Universidad Nacional de Colombia : Boletín Bitácora - Sede Medellín - La única mujer colombiana del IPCC es egresada de la Sede. 2021-08-10. unimedios.medellin.unal.edu.co.
4. Web site: IPCC Authors (beta). 2021-08-09. archive.ipcc.ch.
5. Web site: Thesis - Changes in cloudiness over tropical land during the last decades and its link to global climate change. 10 August 2021. SMARTech - Georgia Tech.
6. Climate variability over the American monsoon and Amazonian regions during the last decades. 2011. thesis. Paola Andrea. Arias-Gómez.
7. Web site: Thesis - Climate variability over the American monsoon and Amazonian regions during the last decades. 10 August 2021. University of Texas Library Repositories.
8. Web site: Guest panel of experts. 2021-08-10. escuela-ids.itm.edu.co.
9. Arias-Gomez. Paola. 2014. THE ROLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC SUBTROPICAL HIGH ON THE RECENT VARIABILITY OF THE AMERICAN MONSOON SYSTEMS AND ITS PROJECTIONS. en.
10. Web site: Miembros del Grupo de Investigación en Ingeniería y Gestión Ambiental (GIGA). 10 August 2021. Universidad de Antioquia. es.
11. Web site: TEDxBogotaMujeres TED. 2021-08-10. www.ted.com.
12. Web site: Citation - Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report. 10 August 2021. IPCC.
13. Web site: 2015-03-13. GHP Panel Members GEWEX. 2021-08-10. GEWEX . en.
14. Web site: 2015-01-20. GEWEX Hydroclimatology Panel GEWEX. 2021-08-10. GEWEX . en.
15. Web site: WCRP Lighthouse Activity: My Climate Risk - Science Plan Development Team. 10 August 2021. WCRP Climate.
16. Web site: WCRP Lighthouse Activities. 2021-08-10. www.wcrp-climate.org.
17. Web site: Programas y Grupos de Trabajo del PHI Hidrogeomorfología de la Cuenca Andino-Amazónica (HIDRICAA). 10 August 2021. UNESCO. es.
18. Web site: 2020-09-02. HIDRICAA. 2021-08-10. UNESCO. en.