DURHAM, N.C. – Climate change linked to global warming could have profound future impacts on North Carolina, affecting everything from the respiratory health of the state’s citizens to the physical shape of its shoreline and barrier islands.

That’s the message four of the state’s leading authorities on climate and climate change – including two Nicholas School faculty members – will deliver to members of the North Carolina General Assembly and other invited state leaders in a panel discussion and Q&A session, “Global Climate Change and North Carolina,” on Wednesday, May 26, at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh.

“Some may believe that the climate has always been changing and that we don’t need to worry. But the speed and extent of the climate change caused by humans is unprecedented in the geologic record,” said William H. Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry.

“Our job, as scientists, is to inform policymakers of these risks, and give them the scientific knowledge they need to make smart decisions,” he said.

Schlesinger, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, will be joined on the panel by Susan Lozier, Truman and Nellie Semans Professor of Physical Oceanography at the Nicholas School; Sethu Raman, state climatologist and professor of meteorology at North Carolina State University; and Peter Robinson, professor of geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lozier will lead off the discussion with an overview of climate change. “I’ll present the hows and whys of climate change, and the role the atmosphere and oceans play in it,” she said. She’ll describe for legislators some of the changes scientists are now observing, such as rising sea levels; emerging patterns of extreme or changing weather in many regions of the world; and changes in deep ocean water salinity and temperatures in parts of the North Atlantic.

Robinson and Raman will detail how these changes have affected, or could affect in future years, North Carolina’s climate.

Schlesinger will address climate change’s impacts on public health, ecosystems and the economy.

“The policies we choose to enact and enforce, and the choices we make about energy use, sustainable development, agriculture and natural resource management, will directly affect North Carolina’s future,” Schlesinger said.

The forum is sponsored by the North Carolina Climate Education Partnership, and will be moderated by Bill Ross, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Resources. For more information, contact Maria Sadowski, at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, at (919) 733-7450, ext. 305.