Learning Laboratory: Prof. Claudio Piani on the Environmental Impacts of Urban Lockdowns

In honor of Earth Day, AUP’s Professor Claudio Piani explores the environmental impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the sixth episode of the Learning Laboratory. As lockdowns, quarantines, and social distancing become the new normal in most large urban centers around the world, Piani explains, “we are being offered a glimpse of what the ecological response to a substantial reduction of the human footprint could be.”

About Professor Claudio Piani

Professor Piani studied oceanography and atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, funded by a comprehensive four-year Fulbright scholarship. He obtained his PhD in 2000 with a thesis on 3D modelling of atmospheric waves triggered by very intense thunderstorms. He went on to work as a post-doctoral researcher on ozone, mid-atmospheric dynamics and climate change at the University of Oxford in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics department. In 2006 he moved to The International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, where he was awarded funds from the European Union for research in hydrological modelling. Piani remained at ICTP as a visiting scientist until joining The American University of Paris in 2012. His current research interests are bias-correction of climate model output, and climate driven evolution.