PLOS Climate PhD interview: Rodrigo Muñoz

In the next instalment in our series of interviews with PhD students in climate research, PLOS Climate speaks to Rodrigo Muñoz of the Institute of Atmospheric Science and Climate Change (ICAyCC) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

What did you study before your PhD, and why did you decide to go on to do a PhD?

Before beginning university, I was split between studying something oriented towards research or having a more practical degree. I ended up choosing civil engineering as my undergraduate degree, where I quickly learned of the scale of environmental destruction that is associated with urbanization and the construction of infrastructure. I decided to focus on the environmental engineering area, and after some time working on renewable energy, I became aware of all the work that is still necessary for the understanding of our climate system and the interlinkages between natural and human systems. This rekindled my interest towards academia, and I decided to start a master’s degree in atmospheric sciences, in which I was first exposed to the inter- and trans-disciplinary nature of climate science and realized that was what I was most interested in. This led me to my doctoral studies in climate science, and I am deeply grateful for my academic journey that has given me an interdisciplinary vision to tackle my research towards the understanding and the search of solutions to the planetary crisis.

Could you tell us about your project? What are the key questions you’re hoping to address, and what methods/approaches are you using?

I am working on the socioeconomic impacts of climate change and climate interventions. My main research questions are oriented towards how people and the economy in Mexico are affected by climate change, what are the efforts necessary to mitigate it and what are the interactions between these impacts and mitigation efforts. I’ve worked with integrated assessment models, particularly GCAM, which we have used to determine pathways towards mid-century net zero and the associated uncertainties. Additionally, I have been analyzing the impacts on energy systems, modelling how residential energy demand would increase in climate change and further strain the complex tariff structure of Mexico’s public utilities, how changes in the cloud cover would change the solar resource and its diurnal structure, and how solar panel orientation can help ease its integration into the grid by bridging the gap between demand and generation timing. I have also been participating in other projects such as analyzing the impacts of geoengineering interventions, and the risks of the termination shock (a sudden termination of the intervention measure), the chronic systemic impacts of climate change on Mexican GDP, and the interaction between global climate change and the local urban heat island under urbanization projections. My main research tools are computer modelling and statistical data analysis, which I apply with interdisciplinary methods combining climatology, economics, and sectoral methods, especially for energy systems.

What excites you most about your project, and about the wider field?

I think that the integrated assessment modelling community is moving beyond a purely technical vision of the future and from asking how it look could like towards questioning what is the future that we would like to have and how do we get there. It is then not a matter of asking whether we can reach net zero emissions, but who benefits from this green transition and who is left behind, and how the different sociotechnical imaginaries that we can reach with these models align with questions of fairness and cultural assumptions implicit in the modelling. I also find it interesting that there is a drive toward national scenarios and the study of subnational impacts, mitigation and adaptation efforts and how there are emerging frameworks that study all these components in a holistic fashion instead of seeing each as separate efforts. Finally, I am thrilled that the governments of the global south are giving real priority to the relevance of science-based policy to our regional interest as well as to the way local assessments of climate efforts can inform decision-making.

Where you would like to take your career next?

My plan is to stay in academia, as I still feel I have a lot of relevant global and local questions that I would like to find answers to, and I believe that research is fundamental for us to create as fairer future with shared prosperity for all. I also consider that our responsibility as scholars is to share all the knowledge that we have received for the benefit of our community and to help others acquire those abilities to keep creating knowledge in a present where Carl Sagan’s idea of a Demon-Haunted World seems as relevant as ever. Therefore, I also have a passion for teaching, and I believe that it is essential and indivisible from other academic work such as research, and I also plan to keep doing this activity in the future. My intention then is to go on to a postdoctoral position after finishing my PhD and keep delving into integrated assessment models and how to model local impacts and solutions that are fairer.

What are your thoughts on the future of climate research? 

I believe that in the face of the current global geopolitical situation and the crisis of multilateralism where climate action might be seen as the least of our short term concerns, climate science must keep working both as the writing on the wall underscoring our reasons for concern and as a beacon of hope that helps us imagine better futures and laying the path of how we can get there. As such, my vision aligns with that of many others that while science is and must remain evidence-based, science is also not neutral, and that we do climate science because we care about the planet and all the beings that inhabit it. Therefore, my hopes for the future of climate research are for us to have more international and intranational collaboration networks and a stronger sense of community that fosters the innovative research we need to show us how can we create a better world for everyone.