UAlbany coastal-urban climatologist Jorge González-Cruz discusses the collaboration he’s leading to improve the security and resiliency of coastal power grids. Using Puerto Rico as a testbed, González-Cruz and his team are reconstructing past major weather events on the island, including 2017’s devastating Category 4 Hurricane Maria, and gathering data for developing new predictive modeling that can anticipate risks of disruption to the island’s power grid during extreme weather.
Website for Jorge González-Cruz
Recent articles from the University at Albany about Dr. González-Cruz's work and research:
Strengthening Puerto Rico’s Power Grid for a Resilient Future
UAlbany Researcher, Grad Student Team Up to Improve the Resiliency of Puerto Rico’s Power Grid
UAlbany Climate Scientist Awarded Federal Grant to Improve Resiliency of Coastal Power Grids
Climate Scientists Use Data from Hurricane Maria to Test Social Vulnerability Assessment Tool
UAlbany Climate Scientist Joins New Caribbean Climate Adaptation Network
5 Questions with Faculty: Jorge E. González-Cruz
Other resources:
Caribbean Climate Adaptation Network (CCAN)
University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez
University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA)
New York Power Authorigy (NYPA)
The Engagement Ring, Episode 26: Strengthening Puerto Rico’s Power Grid for a Resilient Future
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Welcome to The Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners, working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
All the sensors on the island, including the radar from the National Weather Service, were knocked out, so the island went through the storm in the dark. So, in order for us to learn from what happened we had to reconstruct the event and the impacts on the infrastructure.
MARY HUNT:
UAlbany coastal-urban climatologist Jorge Gonzalez-Cruz discusses the collaboration he’s leading to improve the security and resiliency of coastal power grids. Using Puerto Rico as a testbed, González-Cruz and his team are reconstructing past major weather events on the island, including 2017’s devastating Category 4 Hurricane Maria, and gathering data for developing new predictive modeling that can anticipate risks of disruption to the island’s power grid during extreme weather.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
The long-term goal is to open the conversation in the research and practice community that there are better ways to really provide resiliency to that critical infrastructure that we call the energy grid.
MARY HUNT/ANNOUNCER:
Here’s my conversation with Dr. González-Cruz…
MARY HUNT:
Welcome to the podcast, Jorge.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Thank you, Mary for having me. It's a great honor to be here.
MARY HUNT:
Jorge, we continue to hear about Puerto Rico's ongoing challenges with power outages and blackouts. We think back to 2017 when Hurricane Maria hit and they were without power for months. Just this week, New Year's Eve, the island was knocked out of power for considerable amount of folks for several days. It sounds like things are kind of coming back online, but they continue to be troubled by these power issues. Why is Puerto Rico so vulnerable to power outages and blackouts?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
I think the island is a reflection of the state of the critical infrastructure across the world, including the U.S., both continental and outside of the continent. We envision the way of living 75, 100 years ago, and we have stayed with the system as it was. So, we haven't gotten a chance in in our lifetime to see a re-envisioning, restoration, upgrades that the infrastructure requires. And so I make that as a general statement, and in the particular case of Puerto Rico, there are other challenges that expose the level of lack of updates and upgrades. It’s the compounding case of a changing climate that exposes the region in the Caribbean to be heavily exposed to recurrent extreme weather events. So that is a combination of those factors, and you may ask the question why doesn't happen in other islands in the in the Caribbean, in Dominican Republic, perhaps in Cuba. And that is true, and a part of the reason is that the system in Puerto Rico is very complex. It’s a fully electrified Island. It's a very modern Island, just like most, if not all states. So the demand and the sophistication of the system is far more complex than any other of the islands. So we have a very complex system, very dense in terms of the power infrastructure. It’s exposed to extreme weather events in a complex terrain, the topography, and at the same time, it hasn't been upgraded in the way it should have been upgraded. And that upgrade is not only the, or the lack of. is not only Puerto Rico, it’s the whole continental U.S. So we have a combination of factors that makes the system very vulnerable, and it means that it has pushed us to re-envision the way that we provide that critical service, and it is the anchor of the economy.
MARY HUNT:
I didn’t know a great deal about Puerto Rico until Maria and was much in the news about the challenges they were facing. So I want to ask you, if you'll just paint a picture of Puerto Rico for me in terms of its location from the mainland us, population size. And you mentioned topography. I think that's interesting to help people understand what the topography of the land is.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Yeah. And again, this is I think the case of, you know common, U.S. people that we don't know many of our own places. So I appreciate the question and Puerto Rico it is a U.S. territory. And that dates back to 1898. That was the reward for the U.S. intervening in a war. And the history, we think, with the U.S. and Puerto Rico started at that time. And there are only a few territories within the U.S. I think it's about three. That includes Puerto Rico, the largest. The U.S. Virgin Islands, which is just east of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, and Guam. However, the island is a very populated place. It used to be 4 million people just up to here at Hurricane Maria. And the storm motivated a migration, and today stand about 3.5, 3.5 million people, and they are called Puerto Ricans, you know like myself that live in the United States, we make about the same number, so the total Puerto Rican population or heritage is about 8 million or 9 million people total. On the island, most are a born and raised in Puerto Rico. But we do have a large population that is growing, actually growing from the continental U.S. Everybody is a U.S. citizen as part of the territorial agreement. Whoever is born in Puerto Rico becomes a U.S. citizen by birth, so that right is extended to the territories as well. It means that we can travel back and forth between the U.S. continental and the island without any passport, for example. And being a territory from the U.S, it has all the proper aspects of a very modern life. So we actually see very little difference between Puerto Rico and let's say Florida, for example, in terms of the standard of living and the infrastructure, is the most modern place in the Caribbean by far. So it is a very dynamic society in general and is becoming, as many places in the U.S., an aging population. So we have a large population that is becoming a little bit older and it has some challenges that the territorial status brings too that a potentially may have some implications in the state of the economy to be on par with the with the rest of the states. And so that's the island and being a very sophisticated place it has a sophisticated infrastructure. The power grid at the time that it was put together back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, it was the most modern infrastructure probably in the world. And it is around… we think the island, which is has a very beautiful topography, central mountains that run from east to west about 5000 feet elevation, very tropical, just beautiful landscapes with the mountains and the valleys and the ocean, the Caribbean Ocean, just a beautiful place. It has the only tropical rainforest within the U.S. It’s called El Yunque on the eastern side, a very unique place, and it has a lot of uniqueness in terms of the nature aspect. In terms of the power infrastructure, because the island has such a complex topography, the way that was envisioned was to have most of the production in the southern part of the island. Most people live in the northern part of the island in the capital city and surrounding areas, the San Juan metro area. About half of the population live in that region. It’s a very nice, very modern place, too. So the energy has to be brought from the south about 40 miles, a little bit more than that when we take into account the topography all the way to the north. So that means that the transmission system is exposed to nature, and it heavily exposes the major power lines across the island, south, north, just straight up almost so there is no such a thing as underground cabling, because it would be just impossible to do that. There's no place in world that would do this underground cabling, at the time or even now. It’s just hard to get that power across a and that makes the system very exposed to extreme weather events, for example. And the challenge of bringing the power from the South to the North also brings additional challenges that seems to have been the case in the recent blackout, that it was just actually a major line that fell in the south and unplugged the majority of the population in the north, northern part of the island.
MARY HUNT:
There are two other islands that are populated. Is that correct, and do they experience the same kind of power outages, or are they experiencing worse because they're… (trails off)
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
That is correct. So in reality, we call it the Archipelago of Puerto Rico, and that's actually the formal name, and it is a combination of a number of islands --- the main island, which is about 100 miles long by 35 when we take it and simplify with the dimensions of it, and that makes a very dense place. Almost 4 million people in the location. And there are two other inhabited islands in the eastern side, Vieques that used to be a major Navy range back in the 70s, 80s or so. And it has, it's a municipality. It’s a beautiful place. It's about 20 miles east from Puerto Rico. And then there is another inhabited island called CulebraIsland. And it's about 20… a little bit more than Vieques, a little bit more toward the northeast part of the Puerto Rico mainland, also a municipality, and it's about 10,000 people. Vieques, maybe about twice that number. I may be off by a few thousand here and there. Beautiful. It is considered to have one of the most beautiful beaches, Flamenco beach in Culebra, very touristy place. And there are a lot of properties that are owned by folks from continental U.S. there. And so that makes the inhabited archipelago. There are a few other islands that are protected, a natural preserve. There is Isla de Mona west, straight west. It's about 40 miles actually from mainland Puerto Rico. It’s an outdoor preserve, just a tremendous place to go, just the beaches and all that. And it's protected, just a treasure of nature between Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. There are a lot of smaller islands across the southern coast, most of them are touristic or preserve. And so that makes the whole combination of the islands that made up the Archipelago of Puerto Rico.
MARY HUNT:
What is life like for residents of Puerto Rico with the threat of looming power outages and this unstable grid? What is it like to live under those circumstances? Have people adjusted to people live with great uncertainty? Does it create unusual costs or excessive need to plan for them. What is it like?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
It is a I think post-Hurricane Maria really magnified the challenge. I think the island was just at the brink to experience something like this, and there were symptoms that the system was becoming fragile just before the storm. It was a back-to- back storms. It was Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria all together. And I think that really brought the people to the brink. I don't think there is any kind of acceptance of this. I think the population really deserves and demands and there have been some significant implications on the state of infrastructure. There have been some changes in government, so the people have expressed themselves, and part of that, I believe, is the people are tired of this. So they are taking the solution into their own hands for the most part, not waiting for the government to take action. That's just part of the attitude of the Puerto Ricans, the resiliency of the people of the island, whether they are native-born and raised there or not. And so there have been a lot of changes since this event. Just to remind the audience that Hurricane Maria prompted the largest blackout in the history of the U.S. There were folks who were almost a year without power. More than half of the population were without power for six months. That's unheard of. And it’s not only that critical service of having a light in the nighttime. I’s the interconnection implications, the downscale effects, meaning water services were limited, communications. So the desperation, people just got tired of it, and they start started finding their own solution. So a couple of things that have happened since then… first, the infrastructure was very centralized, very government-focused, and that has been the tradition and that probably was a model that was in many states in the continental U.S. years back and that changed over time to be more mixed between private sector and having the government more as a safeguard rather than being the main service provider. So the island was totally government run in terms of critical infrastructure, both power and water. And because of this things changed. There was a call to make major changes. And now the island services are private. They are serviced by, in this in this particular case, by two companies, Luma doing the transmission and distribution, and a new company Genera that is doing the generation, the main generation, because, in addition to that there are a number of other private generators, and I'll touch on that a little bit in a second. So that prompted that the system had to be… the way that the service was provided and the institution for critical services changes. It had to be changed. It was the demand of the people to be changed and to evolve to a system that was more up to the times, and that's where for the first time what is called the Puerto Rico Energy Commission was organized and a plan for the future was a put together to evolve the island to be more renewable, meaning based on natural resources because the island doesn't have oil or gas so everything is imported. That is another challenge. And in addition to the fragility of the system there is no resources on their own, well, as we knew it until recently. So now there is a great push to move the island to be fully renewable by 2050. There is a law… just like New York State law to become decarbonized, right, and New York City. So that was way before New York State, so that was very progressive. And the island is moving, not at the pace that we would like to see, but it is moving towards that goal, and that for the first time has provided a long-term vision, and it has stayed steady. I hope that the new governor and the administration will follow those plans, but we’ll see, because consistency is crucial here to modify the large infrastructure. So that came because of the call of the people with their vote, with their voices. In addition, there has been a tremendous push to empower the residents with their own power generation, so solar residential has become a large boon. We supported the federal government under the present and even the previous administration. I hope that the new administration, also in the States, will continue as part of the reconstruction the, what we call the on-site power generation is a major component, meaning that the residents that have the means can power their own home. And this the personal case of my family. They have their own solar panels with battery. And during the recent blackout, of course, we were very concerned, so it's a little bit of relief now that they have their own means. So, I think the island has become probably the most progressive in the Western Hemisphere in terms of transformation towards a renewable, sustainable power grid for the future. Still years to go, but I'm glad that, I think we are all, most of us glad that it's moving in that direction. So, from the disaster, I think something great is coming out.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about your research. Speaking of something great coming out, I've been hearing great things about your work and how you're involving students, and I know you're planning in the coming weeks to go back to Puerto Rico to continue, and there's work being done even while you're here. But tell me what is the issue or the problem that you set out to address through your research and how are you going about that?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
We’re just thrilled to be able to put a little seed on this transformation of Puerto Rico and use the opportunity as a learning lesson for beyond Puerto Rico. As I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, the island is heavily exposed to the threats of a changing climate. We have been studying the Caribbean climate for a very long time. We have found that the ocean temperatures have been rising at a rate that is just faster than most places in the world. And this is where the hurricanes are formed. We call that the main developing region. It’s the region where hurricanes are active, and is the genesis of the hurricanes, just east of the Caribbean and the islands are heavily exposed. Chances are that a hurricane is likely to happen. We can bet on that 50% that the trajectory is going to pass somehow through and it's just a matter of luck whether it's going to hit this island or the other. And it was a fact that in Hurricane Maria the path went through Puerto Rico. It’s hard to say, but was probably a little bit of a blessing because I can imagine such a hurricane passing through the rest of the island in the west. The disaster would have been even larger probably in terms of human lives. So, Puerto Rico was able to sustain to a large degree that heavy, heavy storm. So we expect that this is going to continue happening. It's not going to get any better. So we need to find solutions to the problem. And so we set out ourselves to support the reconstruction, to understand the implications of these extreme weather events in the on the critical infrastructure. So we're trying to combine our expertise in both engineering and climate sciences in addressing the problem I mentioned about the case of the grid to be exposed that by itself brings challenges that we have not envisioned. The infrastructure has not been built to sustain such events in complex terrain where the winds are enhanced by factor of two. So we do need a different way to understand the implications, anticipate risk and potentially guide the resiliency of the infrastructure, meaning whether how the rebuild is going to take place. So that's our goal, to combine those pieces of knowledge, Caribbean climate with energy engineering and hopefully to suggest possible ways that the infrastructure will be what we call enhanced. It’s going to somehow be able to support and sustain, or, as a minimum, to anticipate the risk. And so that's the process and that involves a number of tasks and methods to how we get there.
MARY HUNT:
How do you collect data? I understand there's a series of sensors that you and the students that you're working with have been setting up. What are these? What kind of data are these sensors collecting?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
So what we have been doing recently after conducting a full comprehensive reconstruction of what happened with Hurricane Maria, including the hurricane itself, we have to model the hurricane to provide what we call synthetic data because the all the sensors on the island including the radar from the National Weather Service was just knocked out so the island went through the storm in dark. So in order for us to learn from what happened, we had to reconstruct the event and the impacts on the infrastructure. So what we learned was that those assets that are heavily exposed in the complex terrains were the most affected, and that was really the bigger problem. It was so difficult to restore that system because the high voltage lines that goes through south to north from south through east, and from east to north again, and then there is another line that goes from south to the west, they were completely devastated. And so we had to see why that happened in the sense of this was designed to sustain x amount of winds and precipitation and rain. And that means that we have to re-envision and revisit even the design structures we're trying to understand now what is it that these assets are really exposed to. And the only way to do that is to what we call institute observation to understand the stresses that these assets are exposed to. They were probably designed for far simpler conditions, perhaps a hurricane category three, under flat terrain, all of that. The complexity of today is just far more challenging than what it was. And the recurrence of events is hurricane after hurricane, just a few days between the two. So we are set up to in the field to observe not only the weather conditions around the assets, meaning the towers, the cables, but also what the cables and the towers are experiencing. So we can suggest frameworks to enhance the assets, whether it's better towers or different towers, or just re envisioning the way that the system is being distributed and transmitted. So that's what we were learning for at this point. That also gives us a lot of other tools to anticipate short term risk. The industry is evolving into what we call real-time reaction, meaning if we understand when the event is coming, just like weather prediction, can we predict where the damage will occur? So either the crews can be a deployed ahead of time to restore the system faster, or to redirect the service to other type of redundant lines. Let's say, for example, maybe power needs to be modified instead of going to the central mountains to go to the west, in the case of Puerto Rico. So that is a what we are learning about it. We hope to deliver these products as a test case for Puerto Rico with immediate impacts to manage the grid better and to prepare for risk in short and long term, but the same is happening in many other places across U.S. and across the world. So we hear what’s happening in Texas, and we hear what you know is happening also in other places. And perhaps the nature of the events is a little bit different. They're not tropical, perhaps extra tropical in the winter cases, but the infrastructure is heavily exposed and the climate has changed. It's not a matter of when. It's already changed and we are seeing stronger events, so we're going to have to really step up. And so the long-term goal is to open the conversation in the research and practice community that there are better ways to really provide resiliency to that critical infrastructure that we call the energy grid.
MARY HUNT:
And how are you working with students? How are they involved in the projects?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Well, it's great. This is a great exercise for our own learning, but for the students. They have the opportunity to see the whole cycle of science, from motivation to challenging scientific problems, which is, you know, climate and weather forecast to practical implications to offset what happens. So, hands-on laboratory, and I believe that they have expressed that a little bit to me, but maybe I'm biased because I'm their professor, so I think they value the relevance that what they do really matters, that it may have a good, positive impact in in the short, and possibly midterm. They see that their work is valued by the community and also our partners on the ground. And they see that they're investing their time in something they may be able to see the benefit.
MARY HUNT:
You said something that struck me that I really liked you. Said that the urban climate represents a new frontier where both science and engineering converge. Can, can you explain, which meant by that?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Yeah, absolutely. This is a… I believe that the built environment is a very human component, it’s a dimension that represents us and that means that they are constructed, infrastructure-constructed environment. That means that we have in somehow engineered the landscape that was pristine at some time given time. But this is where we manifest and it’s our own doing and mostly positive aright, because that's where we actually make our own lifetime. So it represents, I think, that frontier where the laws of nature converge with our own influence, and that means that we to understand that we need to have a sense of how those engineering systems function and work, whether there is energy activity, whether there is heat emissions, whether there is pollution or not, and not all pollution is bad, and frame that human activity in the engineering way. It's very challenging, actually, too, and then having that convergence with nature. So when we think about large scale climate, the human influence plays a little role in the sense that we are trying to represent but we go to scales that are at the built environment scales, cities, neighborhoods, infrastructure, and that’s where we need to have a different approach. It’s a bridge where the physical sciences meet engineering, and that, by itself, creates a whole new field. And I found this so fascinating, and being in the middle it’s great. Actually I'm learning every day something new and pushing ourselves to understand those two dimensions.
MARY HUNT:
I would imagine you have many partners in this research and in this work, obviously, working with communities, communities who are so dearly affected by their environments. Who are your partners, government agencies, the power agencies… I understand you're working with the University of Puerto Rico.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Without partners, we cannot do this work. It's a community driven, it’s user-driven research. Research is fitting the needs of a group of people, communities, neighborhoods. So it’s like an on-demand research. So we work in the island and also outside the island, with great partners in the utility sector, the power sector, our main partner is the private company Luma in the case of the island, and prior to that was the government agency PREPA, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority so we have transcended that transition in the partnership, and that's what science does. It's more consistent. We do work with other stakeholders that are in the pipeline of that particular service, and the water companies, there is a lot of interconnection between power and water. So those are also additional partners and more recently we're actually working with other sectors in the health and the educational sector, mostly on the demand side. And it connects because the region is also experiencing what we call extreme heat events so it prompts the demand of the energy, and we're trying to understand how these a peak energy demands due to extreme heat are impacting infrastructure, how much power is needed. And so that is a good new group of stakeholders that we work with on the demand side. And also as I mentioned, the school system. The school system had to close for the first time back in the summer of 2023. Schools for a few days because it was too hard for the students and the teachers to be in the place. And that led to for us to understand what does that mean, and how can we mediate how the grid can manage that load because there were power outages because of the excessive demand for air conditioning. So we're trying to see in that in a holistic way the new grid, the new infrastructure, not only from generation resiliency, but also the demand aspect. What will be the new demand? And this learning, Mary, is also happening in well, translating that into other jurisdictions, like we're working closely with NYPA here in New York State trying to understand what will be the future energy demand. So those methods that we are actually developing in the Caribbean, we've already been translating into other locations, including our own New York State because we're going to major information to the carbonite side the state, and now the new winter so we actually have developed a lot of this knowledge in the Caribbean as our proving ground, and now we have some really new friends, new partners in the state that have opened the doors and are willing to use our methods and some of our expertise to guide new infrastructure in new places. Additional academic partners include, of course, UPR as a system. We work very closely, believe it or not, with the medical science at the public health school in this new challenge that we see the Caribbean in terms of managing the extreme heat and health. Of course, we provide the climate perspective and the energy perspective, while they provide the public health perspective. We have ongoing grants with the sponsor. They are actually the main sponsors of our research, and that is being extending to U.S. Vi, working with colleagues in Saint Thomas and Saint Croix as well along the same subject of energy resiliency and also public well-being. So that has been fascinating with this… the University of Virgin Islands. So we have a major project we call climate mitigation for the Caribbean. It's a group of all colleagues that got together and said can we explore this, and it was demanded by the Department of Health as well, in the localities. And our long-term partner is UPR Mayagüez, from both the engineering and the climate science perspective, and continue working very strongly with them for more than 20 years now. And in all our private research for the Caribbean has been joined with my colleagues at UPR Mayagüez. And still today, we're looking forward to new frontiers to provide better forecasts for weather, climate. They are more on the on the hard sciences side. So we collaborate with them, and we have joint sponsorship from grants and continue to working with them. It’s been a blessing all my career to work with my friends and colleagues when since I was just a young faculty at the time there. So we have never stopped working together.
MARY HUNT:
I want to ask you too about the Caribbean Climate Adaptation Network. CCAN. Is that something that you're still involved in? What is that?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Yeah, so this is the program that is being led by UPR Medical Sciences, and it's a Caribbean climate adaptation network, a NOAA sponsored program. It’s quite large program, about $1 million per year of funding to support communities, support the communities’ sectors for climate adaptation, and one of those sectors is in public health. And the school systems are one target community as a whole, in exploring ways that the public school system can adapt to extreme climate events. That involves both Puerto Rico and U.S. VI as a whole community. So that's the Caribbean Climate Adaptation Network. It also connects with the power infrastructure as a key service to maintain the system up and running when the demands increase, and at the same time we have a second component, very focused on extreme flooding events. These are mostly in the riverine communities, which is a major, major challenge, and I’m partially involved on that component of the effort. It’s mostly led by UPR Mayagüez colleagues, hydrologists, and is again, it's user driven in trying to motivate conversations. It plans for long term adaptation on communities at risk in coastal and riverine communities, a major challenge in the island the what we call the riverine communities, because a large number of communities are have been built over generations at the river banks, and they are not protected and heavily exposed to landslides and other just extreme riverine flooding, and that was manifested a number of times in Maria, Irma, also Fiona. Most major storms will have that signature, and we need to address that, a big challenge. So we're making good progress with the local communities, but also government agencies, including FEMA, a corps of engineers to revisit and invest properly, but also educate all of us, including the communities of the potential or risk. How can we mitigate those risks in a new climate? And so we've been very lucky and blessed to have the sponsors from multiple partners, including NOAA as the main sponsor for that program.
MARY HUNT:
The need for and the value of diversity in the workplace and in higher education has been much debated these days, but you've said that your field needs more scholars from diverse backgrounds. I'm curious why you feel that way? What benefit is there to having diversity in climate science?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
I feel that and I see it even for the future of our discipline, we need to bring talent that is truly representative of our communities, because they all connect. We all connect to our communities. I mean, my own example, if we can use it, is relevant. So bringing that those voices, it just enriches the conversation so much. It's not a detached science. It’s more personal. We need that feedback so the science is more targeted and doesn't become abstract and the large investment that we're making in science is really of use to those that mostly need it. So I think that's one key aspect that I feel that is necessary to be affecting our science delivery, for the future of our own profession to attract others into the field, and the fact that we are we are changing. Our demographic is changing and we need to open doors to those changes otherwise it's going to be very difficult for us to, beyond competing, it’s to keep our pace with the challenges of our own life and grow our knowledge. So we need to have that environment that is welcoming to all of us and be truly representative. And finally, the fact is that the conversation is so enriched when we see these different voices and perspectives. It makes our science a lot better, stronger, more relevant, and having all these elements together, so I believe it’s a matter of… and if we don't allow this and encourage it and be intentional about it, I don't think our field will progress. And actually, the earth sciences is one of the less diverse fields and I think we're even potentially at risk if we don't do this in an effective way. I think we're making some progress, but I think we need to even do a lot more and sooner, otherwise we're going to be at a high risk not only because people are retiring. So who's going to replace those talents? It's hard to train a doctoral student and post doc, it takes 10 years to do that. It’s a lot of effort to motivate the young generation to be engaged in this field. And the problems have grown; we've just talked about it. So we need more talent. We need more. Yeah, more people. And there's so many bright minds that if we're not intentional about opening the world, providing opportunities and being models for the younger generation, I think we're at heavy risk in our field.
MARY HUNT:
There really is no corner of the world that is unaffected by climate change or climate challenges, and everyone would bring their own perspective, their own experience, which might contribute to discussion or solutions or other people experiencing similar challenges.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
And there are great opportunities in finding solution to this problem. You know, we innovate. We create technology, new infrastructure. So I think it could be exciting in terms of new opportunities, not only knowledge, but also in technology and also the economy. I think we can create economic development based on these solutions that will provide a more sustained and resilient work.
MARY HUNT:
Where did your interest in this area come from? Have you always been interested in climate science since being a young man. Did some incident spark it? Where did you get so interested and passionate about the topic?
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
That's a good question. Yeah.
MARY HUNT:
I know you're a sailor and you come from an island, so these are probably two things that contributed to that interest.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Absolutely, I’ve been always passionate about what nature gives us. And my early training was on the energy side of things, and I started thinking about nuclear energy at some point when I was even going to college, but my mind just quickly changed that we could do, you know, just a little bit better and shifted to looking to renewable energy and solar energy. That was my early career as the undergraduate student and understanding the nature of the resource that we have, the blessing of it. So that led to climate. So the connection was clearly from one point to the other. By the time I was just going for my PhD was clear what I liked to do, and it's been challenging to bridge between science and engineering, but I'm excited about it, so I think it comes from very early stage. Yeah.
MARY HUNT:
Where's your hometown in Puerto Rico.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
It's in the South. It's called by Guayama. It's called the Ciudad de los brujos. It's like a witch town… very beautiful, colonial place. A coastal place with beautiful mountains at the same time. So you get both views of nature and all my family lives there. My wife's family lives there. So we are from Guayama.
MARY HUNT:
Very nice. Will you get a chance to visit there when you go back in February for your work.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Of course! The day I go to the island and I don’t visit the family, I'll be out of the family.
[Laughter]
MARY HUNT:
Well, we don't want that to happen. I wish you safe travels to Puerto Rico, and much success in your important work.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity and blessings in the in the great New Year to you and your audience.
MARY HUNT:
Yes, to you as well. Take good care. Thank you, Jorge.
JORGE GONZÁLEZ-CRUZ:
Thank you.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Jorge González-Cruz is a coastal-urban climatologist and Professor of Empire Innovation at the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at the University at Albany. Dr. González-Cruz is currently leading a project funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation to improve the resiliency of coastal power grids. For more information on Dr. González-Cruz’s research and work, visit the resource page for this podcast online at the dash engagement dash ring dot simplecast dot com. The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O P E at Albany dot E D U.
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