The Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network (LAECESS): addressing present and future challenges of the upcoming generations of scientists in the region

Abstract

Early career (EC) Earth system scientists in the Latin America and the Caribbean region (LAC) have been facing several issues, such as limited funding opportunities, substandard scientific facilities, lack of security of tenure, and unrepresented groups equality issues. On top of this, the worsening regional environmental and climatic crises call for the need for this new generation of scientists to help to tackle these crises by increasing public awareness and research. Realizing the need to converge and step up in making a collective action to be a part of the solution, the Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network (LAECESS) was created in 2016. LAECESS’s primary goals are to promote regional networking, foster integrated and interdisciplinary science, organize soft skills courses and workshops, and empower Latin American EC researchers. This article is an initial step towards letting the global science community grasp the current situation and hear the early career LAC science community’s perspectives. The paper also presents a series of future steps needed for better scientific and social development in the LAC region.

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“…With the formation of the Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network (Yáñez-Serrano et al, 2022) and the Southern Hemisphere Working Group of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) project , a stronger scientific community is starting to focus on the region.…”

“…jor obstacle, e.g., Argentina lacks a centralized database to access available data.With the formation of the Latin America Early Career Earth System Scientist Network(Yáñez-Serrano et al, 2022) and the Southern Hemisphere Working Group of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) project, a stronger scientific community is starting to focus on the region.Further studies and observations are needed, especially in the southern part of the continent (i.e., SSAm). There, there is also a large amount of small fires that might not be captured by the satellites, and large territories with no observation sites, which could provide useful information on CO chemistry and air quality in general.Open ResearchCESM2.2 (including MUSICAv0) is a publicly released version of the CommunityEarth System Model that is available at https://www.cesm.ucar.edu/ (last access: 15 March 2023).…”