Stephanie Arcusa

Stephanie Arcusa is a climate and earth physical scientist focusing on climate mitigation and carbon accounting. She has experience collecting large datasets from the natural world and using statistical methods and earth system modeling to make sense of the data. Arcusa holds a Ph.D. in climate and environmental change from Northern Arizona University, a master’s degree in climate science from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and a bachelor’s degree in earth sciences from University College Cork, Ireland.

Her areas of specialization include earth system measurement, paleoclimate reconstruction, climate action planning, fairness in the climate and energy transition, negative emission technologies, carbon accounting, supporting early career researchers, and the certification of carbon sequestration. More specifically, she designs and studies socio-economic and technological frameworks that support negative carbon emissions and a circular carbon economy. She also explores the development of carbon accounting standards from the lens of scientific principles to support a global carbon management system. Arcusa has published on these topics in journals like Climate Policy, The Holocene, Geophysical Research Letters, Earth System Science Data, and Science.

As a paleoclimatologist, Arcusa reconstructs environmental change (e.g., wildfire, floods, dust …) as it responds to climatic changes (e.g., temperature, precipitation…) through time. Combining data and model simulation, her studies have revealed yet another fingerprint of human activities on the climate and the environment. Her work now consists of developing ways to halt the progression of climate change. Arcusa has led or been part of various projects that further emission reduction at the local, city, and higher education levels.