Three ISU professors were among the innovators who contributed to a Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization.

Gene Takle, interim director of geological and atmospheric sciences and of agronomy; William Gutowski, professor of geological and atmospheric sciences; and Raymond Arritt, professor of agronomy, were contributing authors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s third report in 2001 and fourth report in 2007. The panel’s members were awarded the prize Friday for their contributions to climate change research.

Al Gore also shared the limelight for his contributions to raising climate change awareness.

“It really makes you feel good that what you are doing is making an impact,” Arritt said.

Gutowski echoed that feeling of satisfaction.

“It’s nice to say that we’re contributors to this research that is now given recognition on the world stage,” Gutowski said.

All three stressed that the authors of these reports relied heavily on the contributions of many researchers and scientists around the world to compile data on climate change.

“We are only a small part of a very large effort, but nevertheless, we feel honored that our work in some small way contributes to the betterment of the planet,” Takle wrote in an e-mail interview.

The sheer number of researchers working on this project, said Gutowski and Arritt, shows that most of the scientific community is behind the effort to research climate change.

For instance, there were approximately 75 other universities working on these reports, Takle wrote.

“There were hundreds of researchers who worked on this,” Gutowski said.

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, released earlier this year, is divided up into three separate reports, each compiled by a separate “working group.” Takle, Gutowski and Arritt work on the Working Group I Report, “The Physical Science Basis.”

“The Working Group I Report is about the basic science [behind climate change],” Arritt said.

The second and third group’s reports are titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” and “Mitigation of Climate Change.”

The work of a contributing author is built around “suggesting results that should be included about [my] knowledge in the field,” Arritt said.

The professors said some of their research in the field of climate change in the Midwest, particularly Iowa, was used in the report.

“My colleagues and I study regional climate so, for instance, we are developing regional climate models to help understand how the climate of Iowa might change in the future,” Takle wrote. “Our results show Iowa will get slightly more rainfall, more rain in extreme events, more flooding – but possibly also more droughts. Winters will continue to become more mild and summer daytime maximum temperatures will continue, at least for a few years, to trend downward. Humidity will increase – both summer and winter.”

To the professors, the main culprit behind these trends is clear.

“What we are talking about is the added influence of humans on the top of the natural weather patterns,” Gutowski said.

None of the professors had qualms about stating that humans have influenced the Earth’s climate through the increase in greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere, starting with the industrialization period of the late 1880s and increasing exponentially in the years thereafter.

“[Climate change] is primarily human-caused,” Arritt said. “The natural fluctuations in weather patterns contribute to it, but it’s mostly by people.”

Arritt likened looking at climate change over a large period of time to “loading dice,” where, in each successive year, there will be an increase in the probability of climate changes.

“Over time, things are going to become more biased over the long term. It’s going to get warmer,” he said.

The professors hoped that the report will give credibility to the research about climate change and show that the scientific community mostly believes it is a reality.

“I would urge people to pay attention and to learn about climate change because ultimately how we respond to this as a community – and, ideally, a global community – will ideally play out in the political arena in a positive way,” Gutowski said.