Wizard CD Plus and ProTaper Universal: analysis of apical transportation using new software

Science.gov (United States)

GIANNASTASIO, Daiana; da ROSA, Ricardo Abreu; PERES, Bernardo Urbanetto; BARRETO, Mirela Sangoi; DOTTO, Gustavo Nogara; KUGA, Milton Carlos; PEREIRA, Jefferson Ricardo; SÓ, Marcus Vinícius Reis

2013-01-01

Objective This study has two aims: 1) to evaluate the apical transportation of the Wizard CD Plus and ProTaper Universal after preparation of simulated root canals; 2) to compare, with Adobe Photoshop, the ability of a new software (Regeemy) in superposing and subtracting images. Material and Methods Twenty five simulated root canals in acrylic-resin blocks (with 20º curvature) underwent cone beam computed tomography before and after preparation with the rotary systems (70 kVp, 4 mA, 10 s and with the 8×8 cm FoV selection). Canals were prepared up to F2 (ProTaper) and 24.04 (Wizard CD Plus) instruments and the working length was established to 15 mm. The tomographic images were imported into iCAT Vision software and CorelDraw for standardization. The superposition of pre- and post-instrumentation images from both systems was performed using Regeemy and Adobe Photoshop. The apical transportation was measured in millimetres using Image J. Five acrylic resin blocks were used to validate the superposition achieved by the software. Student's t-test for independent samples was used to evaluate the apical transportation achieved by the rotary systems using each software individually. Student's t-test for paired samples was used to compare the ability of each software in superposing and subtracting images from one rotary system per time. Results The values obtained with Regeemy and Adobe Photoshop were similar to rotary systems (P>0.05). ProTaper Universal and Wizard CD Plus promoted similar apical transportation regardless of the software used for image's superposition and subtraction (P>0.05). Conclusion Wizard CD Plus and ProTaper Universal promoted little apical transportation. Regeemy consists in a feasible software to superpose and subtract images and appears to be an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. PMID:24212994

Wizard CD Plus and ProTaper Universal: analysis of apical transportation using new software

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daiana Giannastasio

2013-09-01

Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: This study has two aims: 1 to evaluate the apical transportation of the Wizard CD Plus and ProTaper Universal after preparation of simulated root canals; 2 to compare, with Adobe Photoshop, the ability of a new software (Regeemy in superposing and subtracting images. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Twenty five simulated root canals in acrylic-resin blocks (with 20º curvature underwent cone beam computed tomography before and after preparation with the rotary systems (70 kVp, 4 mA, 10 s and with the 8×8 cm FoV selection. Canals were prepared up to F2 (ProTaper and 24.04 (Wizard CD Plus instruments and the working length was established to 15 mm. The tomographic images were imported into iCAT Vision software and CorelDraw for standardization. The superposition of pre- and post-instrumentation images from both systems was performed using Regeemy and Adobe Photoshop. The apical transportation was measured in millimetres using Image J. Five acrylic resin blocks were used to validate the superposition achieved by the software. Student's t-test for independent samples was used to evaluate the apical transportation achieved by the rotary systems using each software individually. Student's t-test for paired samples was used to compare the ability of each software in superposing and subtracting images from one rotary system per time. RESULTS: The values obtained with Regeemy and Adobe Photoshop were similar to rotary systems (P>0.05. ProTaper Universal and Wizard CD Plus promoted similar apical transportation regardless of the software used for image's superposition and subtraction (P>0.05. CONCLUSION: Wizard CD Plus and ProTaper Universal promoted little apical transportation. Regeemy consists in a feasible software to superpose and subtract images and appears to be an alternative to Adobe Photoshop.

Climate project screening tool: an aid for climate change adaptation

Science.gov (United States)

Toni Lyn Morelli; Sharon Yeh; Nikola M. Smith; Mary Beth Hennessy; Constance I. Millar

2012-01-01

To address the impacts of climate change, land managers need techniques for incorporating adaptation into ongoing or impending projects. We present a new tool, the Climate Project Screening Tool (CPST), for integrating climate change considerations into project planning as well as for developing concrete adaptation options for land managers. We designed CPST as part of...

Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program: WAsP 11 Help Facility

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

2014-01-01

of specific wind turbines and wind farms. The WAsP Help Facility includes a Quick Start Tutorial, a User's Guide and a Technical Reference. It further includes descriptions of the Observed Wind Climate Wizard, the WAsP Climate Analyst, the WAsP Map Editor tool, the WAsP Turbine Editor tool, the Air Density...

BASINS and WEPP Climate Assessment Tools (CAT): Case ...

Science.gov (United States)

This draft report supports application of two recently developed water modeling tools, the BASINS and WEPP climate assessment tools. The report presents a series of short case studies designed to illustrate the capabilities of these tools for conducting scenario based assessments of the potential future effects of climate change on water resources. This report presents a series of short, illustrative case studies using the BASINS and WEPP climate assessment tools.

Digital immunohistochemistry wizard: image analysis-assisted stereology tool to produce reference data set for calibration and quality control.

Science.gov (United States)

Plancoulaine, Benoît; Laurinaviciene, Aida; Meskauskas, Raimundas; Baltrusaityte, Indra; Besusparis, Justinas; Herlin, Paulette; Laurinavicius, Arvydas

2014-01-01

Digital image analysis (DIA) enables better reproducibility of immunohistochemistry (IHC) studies. Nevertheless, accuracy of the DIA methods needs to be ensured, demanding production of reference data sets. We have reported on methodology to calibrate DIA for Ki67 IHC in breast cancer tissue based on reference data obtained by stereology grid count. To produce the reference data more efficiently, we propose digital IHC wizard generating initial cell marks to be verified by experts. Digital images of proliferation marker Ki67 IHC from 158 patients (one tissue microarray spot per patient) with an invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast were used. Manual data (mD) were obtained by marking Ki67-positive and negative tumour cells, using a stereological method for 2D object enumeration. DIA was used as an initial step in stereology grid count to generate the digital data (dD) marks by Aperio Genie and Nuclear algorithms. The dD were collected into XML files from the DIA markup images and overlaid on the original spots along with the stereology grid. The expert correction of the dD marks resulted in corrected data (cD). The percentages of Ki67 positive tumour cells per spot in the mD, dD, and cD sets were compared by single linear regression analysis. Efficiency of cD production was estimated based on manual editing effort. The percentage of Ki67-positive tumor cells was in very good agreement in the mD, dD, and cD sets: regression of cD from dD (R2=0.92) reflects the impact of the expert editing the dD as well as accuracy of the DIA used; regression of the cD from the mD (R2=0.94) represents the consistency of the DIA-assisted ground truth (cD) with the manual procedure. Nevertheless, the accuracy of detection of individual tumour cells was much lower: in average, 18 and 219 marks per spot were edited due to the Genie and Nuclear algorithm errors, respectively. The DIA-assisted cD production in our experiment saved approximately 2/3 of manual marking. Digital IHC wizard

Development of a climate data analysis tool (CDAT)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Marlais, S.M.

1997-09-01

The Climate Data Analysis Tool (CDAT) is designed to provide the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, with the capabilities needed to analyze model data with little effort on the part of the scientist, while performing complex mathematical calculations, and graphically displaying the results. This computer software will meet the demanding need of climate scientists by providing the necessary tools to diagnose, validate, and intercompare large observational and global climate model datasets.

CloudDOE: a user-friendly tool for deploying Hadoop clouds and analyzing high-throughput sequencing data with MapReduce.

Science.gov (United States)

Chung, Wei-Chun; Chen, Chien-Chih; Ho, Jan-Ming; Lin, Chung-Yen; Hsu, Wen-Lian; Wang, Yu-Chun; Lee, D T; Lai, Feipei; Huang, Chih-Wei; Chang, Yu-Jung

2014-01-01

Explosive growth of next-generation sequencing data has resulted in ultra-large-scale data sets and ensuing computational problems. Cloud computing provides an on-demand and scalable environment for large-scale data analysis. Using a MapReduce framework, data and workload can be distributed via a network to computers in the cloud to substantially reduce computational latency. Hadoop/MapReduce has been successfully adopted in bioinformatics for genome assembly, mapping reads to genomes, and finding single nucleotide polymorphisms. Major cloud providers offer Hadoop cloud services to their users. However, it remains technically challenging to deploy a Hadoop cloud for those who prefer to run MapReduce programs in a cluster without built-in Hadoop/MapReduce. We present CloudDOE, a platform-independent software package implemented in Java. CloudDOE encapsulates technical details behind a user-friendly graphical interface, thus liberating scientists from having to perform complicated operational procedures. Users are guided through the user interface to deploy a Hadoop cloud within in-house computing environments and to run applications specifically targeted for bioinformatics, including CloudBurst, CloudBrush, and CloudRS. One may also use CloudDOE on top of a public cloud. CloudDOE consists of three wizards, i.e., Deploy, Operate, and Extend wizards. Deploy wizard is designed to aid the system administrator to deploy a Hadoop cloud. It installs Java runtime environment version 1.6 and Hadoop version 0.20.203, and initiates the service automatically. Operate wizard allows the user to run a MapReduce application on the dashboard list. To extend the dashboard list, the administrator may install a new MapReduce application using Extend wizard. CloudDOE is a user-friendly tool for deploying a Hadoop cloud. Its smart wizards substantially reduce the complexity and costs of deployment, execution, enhancement, and management. Interested users may collaborate to improve the

CloudDOE: a user-friendly tool for deploying Hadoop clouds and analyzing high-throughput sequencing data with MapReduce.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei-Chun Chung

Full Text Available Explosive growth of next-generation sequencing data has resulted in ultra-large-scale data sets and ensuing computational problems. Cloud computing provides an on-demand and scalable environment for large-scale data analysis. Using a MapReduce framework, data and workload can be distributed via a network to computers in the cloud to substantially reduce computational latency. Hadoop/MapReduce has been successfully adopted in bioinformatics for genome assembly, mapping reads to genomes, and finding single nucleotide polymorphisms. Major cloud providers offer Hadoop cloud services to their users. However, it remains technically challenging to deploy a Hadoop cloud for those who prefer to run MapReduce programs in a cluster without built-in Hadoop/MapReduce.We present CloudDOE, a platform-independent software package implemented in Java. CloudDOE encapsulates technical details behind a user-friendly graphical interface, thus liberating scientists from having to perform complicated operational procedures. Users are guided through the user interface to deploy a Hadoop cloud within in-house computing environments and to run applications specifically targeted for bioinformatics, including CloudBurst, CloudBrush, and CloudRS. One may also use CloudDOE on top of a public cloud. CloudDOE consists of three wizards, i.e., Deploy, Operate, and Extend wizards. Deploy wizard is designed to aid the system administrator to deploy a Hadoop cloud. It installs Java runtime environment version 1.6 and Hadoop version 0.20.203, and initiates the service automatically. Operate wizard allows the user to run a MapReduce application on the dashboard list. To extend the dashboard list, the administrator may install a new MapReduce application using Extend wizard.CloudDOE is a user-friendly tool for deploying a Hadoop cloud. Its smart wizards substantially reduce the complexity and costs of deployment, execution, enhancement, and management. Interested users may collaborate

Enhancement of Local Climate Analysis Tool

Science.gov (United States)

Horsfall, F. M.; Timofeyeva, M. M.; Dutton, J.

2012-12-01

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) will enhance its Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT) to incorporate specific capabilities to meet the needs of various users including energy, health, and other communities. LCAT is an online interactive tool that provides quick and easy access to climate data and allows users to conduct analyses at the local level such as time series analysis, trend analysis, compositing, correlation and regression techniques, with others to be incorporated as needed. LCAT uses principles of Artificial Intelligence in connecting human and computer perceptions on application of data and scientific techniques in multiprocessing simultaneous users' tasks. Future development includes expanding the type of data currently imported by LCAT (historical data at stations and climate divisions) to gridded reanalysis and General Circulation Model (GCM) data, which are available on global grids and thus will allow for climate studies to be conducted at international locations. We will describe ongoing activities to incorporate NOAA Climate Forecast System (CFS) reanalysis data (CFSR), NOAA model output data, including output from the National Multi Model Ensemble Prediction System (NMME) and longer term projection models, and plans to integrate LCAT into the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and its protocols for accessing model output and observational data to ensure there is no redundancy in development of tools that facilitate scientific advancements and use of climate model information in applications. Validation and inter-comparison of forecast models will be included as part of the enhancement to LCAT. To ensure sustained development, we will investigate options for open sourcing LCAT development, in particular, through the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).

Storm Water Management Model Climate Adjustment Tool (SWMM-CAT)

Science.gov (United States)

The US EPA’s newest tool, the Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) – Climate Adjustment Tool (CAT) is meant to help municipal stormwater utilities better address potential climate change impacts affecting their operations. SWMM, first released in 1971, models hydrology and hydrauli...

BASINs 4.0 Climate Assessment Tool (CAT): Supporting ...

Science.gov (United States)

EPA announced the availability of the report, BASINS 4.0 Climate Assessment Tool (CAT): Supporting Documentation and User's Manual. This report was prepared by the EPA's Global Change Research Program (GCRP), an assessment-oriented program, that sits within the Office of Research and Development, that focuses on assessing how potential changes in climate and other global environmental stressors may impact water quality, air quality, aquatic ecosystems, and human health in the United States. The Program’s focus on water quality is consistent with the Research Strategy of the U.S. Climate Change Research Program—the federal umbrella organization for climate change science in the U.S. government—and is responsive to U.S. EPA’s mission and responsibilities as defined by the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. A central goal of the EPA GCRP is to provide EPA program offices, Regions, and other stakeholders with tools and information for assessing and responding to any potential future impacts of climate change. In 2007, the EPA Global Change Research Program (GCRP), in partnership with the EPA Office of Water, supported development of a Climate Assessment Tool (CAT) for version 4 of EPA’s BASINS modeling system. This report provides supporting documentation and user support materials for the BASINS CAT tool. The purpose of this report is to provide in a single document a variety of documentation and user support materials supporting the use

Climate risk screening tools and their application: A guide to the guidance

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Traerup, S.; Olhoff, A.

2011-07-01

Climate risk screening is an integral part of efforts to ascertain current and future vulnerabilities and risks related to climate change. It is a prerequisite for identifying and designing adaptation measures, and an important element in the process of integrating, or mainstreaming, climate change adaptation into development project, planning and policy processes. There is an increasing demand and attention among national stakeholders in developing countries to take into account potential implications of climate variability and change for planning and prioritizing of development strategies and activities. Subsequently, there is a need for user friendly guidance on climate risk screening tools and their potentials for application that targets developing country stakeholders. This need is amplified by the sheer volume of climate change mainstreaming guidance documents and risk screening and assessment tools available and currently under development. Against this background, this paper sets out to provide potential users in developing countries, including project and programme developers and managers, with an informational entry point to climate risk screening tools. The emphasis in this report is on providing: 1) An overview of available climate risk screening and assessment tools along with indications of the tools available and relevant for specific purposes and contexts (Section 3). 2) Examples of application of climate risk screening and assessment tools along with links to further information (Section 4). Before turning to the respective sections on available climate risk screening tools and examples of their application, a delimitation of the tools included in this paper is included in Section 2. This section also provides a brief overview of how climate screening and related tools fit into decision making steps at various planning and decision making levels in conjunction with an outline of overall considerations to make when choosing a tool. The paper is

Getting The Picture: Our Changing Climate- A new learning tool for climate science

Science.gov (United States)

Yager, K.; Balog, J. D.

2014-12-01

Earth Vision Trust (EVT), founded by James Balog- photographer and scientist, has developed a free, online, multimedia climate science education tool for students and educators. Getting The Picture (GTP) creates a new learning experience, drawing upon powerful archives of Extreme Ice Survey's unique photographs and time-lapse videos of changing glaciers around the world. GTP combines the latest in climate science through interactive tools that make the basic scientific tenets of climate science accessible and easy to understand. The aim is to use a multidisciplinary approach to encourage critical thinking about the way our planet is changing due to anthropogenic activities, and to inspire students to find their own voice regarding our changing climate The essence of this resource is storytelling through the use of inspiring images, field expedition notes and dynamic multimedia tools. EVT presents climate education in a new light, illustrating the complex interaction between humans and nature through their Art + Science approach. The overarching goal is to educate and empower young people to take personal action. GTP is aligned with national educational and science standards (NGSS, CCSS, Climate Literacy) so it may be used in conventional classrooms as well as education centers, museum kiosks or anywhere with Internet access. Getting The Picture extends far beyond traditional learning to provide an engaging experience for students, educators and all those who wish to explore the latest in climate science.

Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health

Science.gov (United States)

Trtanji, J.

2012-12-01

The need for health information resources to support climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions is growing, both in the United States and around the world, as the manifestations of climate change become more evident and widespread. In many instances, these information resources are not specific to a changing climate, but have either been developed or are highly relevant for addressing health issues related to existing climate variability and weather extremes. To help address the need for more integrated data, the Interagency Cross-Cutting Group on Climate Change and Human Health, a working group of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, has developed the Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health (MATCH). MATCH is a gateway to relevant information that can be used to solve problems at the nexus of climate science and public health by facilitating research, enabling scientific collaborations in a One Health approach, and promoting data stewardship that will enhance the quality and application of climate and health research. MATCH is a searchable clearinghouse of publicly available Federal metadata including monitoring and surveillance data sets, early warning systems, and tools for characterizing the health impacts of global climate change. Examples of relevant databases include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Environmental Public Health Tracking System and NOAA's National Climate Data Center's national and state temperature and precipitation data. This presentation will introduce the audience to this new web-based geoportal and demonstrate its features and potential applications.

Climate change web picker. A tool bridging daily climate needs in process based modelling in forestry and agriculture

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Palma, J.H.N.

2017-11-01

Aim of study: Climate data is a need for different types of modeling assessments, especially those involving process based modeling focusing on climate change impacts. However, there is a scarcity of tools delivering easy access to climate datasets to use in biological related modeling. This study aimed at the development of a tool that could provide an user-friendly interface to facilitate access to climate datasets, that are used to supply climate scenarios for the International Panel on Climate Change. Area of study: The tool provides daily datasets across Europe, and also parts of northern Africa Material and Methods: The tool uses climatic datasets generated from third party sources (IPCC related) while a web based interface was developed in JavaScript to ease the access to the datasets Main Results: The interface delivers daily (or monthly) climate data from a user-defined location in Europe for 7 climate variables: minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, radiation, minimum and maximum relative humidity and wind speed). The time frame ranges from 1951 to 2100, providing the basis to use the data for climate change impact assessments. The tool is free and publicly available at http://www.isa.ulisboa.pt/proj/clipick/. Research Highlights: A new and easy-to-use tool is suggested that will promote the use of climate change scenarios across Europe, especially when daily time steps are needed. CliPick eases the communication between climatic and modelling communities such as agriculture and forestry.

Climate change web picker. A tool bridging daily climate needs in process based modelling in forestry and agriculture

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Palma, J.H.N.

2017-01-01

Aim of study: Climate data is a need for different types of modeling assessments, especially those involving process based modeling focusing on climate change impacts. However, there is a scarcity of tools delivering easy access to climate datasets to use in biological related modeling. This study aimed at the development of a tool that could provide an user-friendly interface to facilitate access to climate datasets, that are used to supply climate scenarios for the International Panel on Climate Change. Area of study: The tool provides daily datasets across Europe, and also parts of northern Africa Material and Methods: The tool uses climatic datasets generated from third party sources (IPCC related) while a web based interface was developed in JavaScript to ease the access to the datasets Main Results: The interface delivers daily (or monthly) climate data from a user-defined location in Europe for 7 climate variables: minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation, radiation, minimum and maximum relative humidity and wind speed). The time frame ranges from 1951 to 2100, providing the basis to use the data for climate change impact assessments. The tool is free and publicly available at http://www.isa.ulisboa.pt/proj/clipick/. Research Highlights: A new and easy-to-use tool is suggested that will promote the use of climate change scenarios across Europe, especially when daily time steps are needed. CliPick eases the communication between climatic and modelling communities such as agriculture and forestry.

Optimum bolus wizard settings in insulin pumps in children with Type 1 diabetes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, A J B; Ostenfeld, A; Pipper, C B

2016-01-01

: Optimum insulin pump settings at pump initiation depend on both insulin requirements and use of the pump. Settings need to be individualized because the standardized calculation factors are not constant for children. There is a need to develop specific age- and insulin dose-dependent calculation factors.......AIM: To evaluate current insulin pump settings in an optimally regulated paediatric population using bolus wizard. METHODS: We used a retrospective study design to analyse data from 124 children on insulin pump therapy who had optimum HbA1c levels [

WindWizard: A New Tool for Fire Management Decision Support

Science.gov (United States)

Bret W. Butler; Mark Finney; Larry Bradshaw; Jason Forthofer; Chuck McHugh; Rick Stratton; Dan Jimenez

2006-01-01

A new software tool has been developed to simulate surface wind speed and direction at the 100m to 300 m scale. This tool is useful when trying to estimate fire behavior in mountainous terrain. It is based on widely used computational fluid dynamics technology and has been tested against measured wind flows. In recent years it has been used to support fire management...

GLOBAL CLIMATE MODEL:A COMPREHENSIVE TOOL IN CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT STUDIES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dharmaveer Singh

2015-01-01

Full Text Available There is growing concern, how and to what extent future changes in climate will affect human society and natural environments. Continuous emissions of Green House Gasses (GHGs at or above current rates will cause further warming. This, in turn, may modify global climate system during 21st century that very likely would have larger impacts than those observed during 20th century. At present, Global Climate Models (GCMs are only the most reliable tools available for studying behaviour of the climate system. This paper presents a comprehensive review of GCMs including their development and applications in climate change impacts studies. Following a discussion of the limitations of GCMs at regional and local scales, different approaches of downscaling are discussed in detail.

The Climate-Agriculture-Modeling and Decision Tool (CAMDT) for Climate Risk Management in Agriculture

Science.gov (United States)

Ines, A. V. M.; Han, E.; Baethgen, W.

2017-12-01

Advances in seasonal climate forecasts (SCFs) during the past decades have brought great potential to improve agricultural climate risk managements associated with inter-annual climate variability. In spite of popular uses of crop simulation models in addressing climate risk problems, the models cannot readily take seasonal climate predictions issued in the format of tercile probabilities of most likely rainfall categories (i.e, below-, near- and above-normal). When a skillful SCF is linked with the crop simulation models, the informative climate information can be further translated into actionable agronomic terms and thus better support strategic and tactical decisions. In other words, crop modeling connected with a given SCF allows to simulate "what-if" scenarios with different crop choices or management practices and better inform the decision makers. In this paper, we present a decision support tool, called CAMDT (Climate Agriculture Modeling and Decision Tool), which seamlessly integrates probabilistic SCFs to DSSAT-CSM-Rice model to guide decision-makers in adopting appropriate crop and agricultural water management practices for given climatic conditions. The CAMDT has a functionality to disaggregate a probabilistic SCF into daily weather realizations (either a parametric or non-parametric disaggregation method) and to run DSSAT-CSM-Rice with the disaggregated weather realizations. The convenient graphical user-interface allows easy implementation of several "what-if" scenarios for non-technical users and visualize the results of the scenario runs. In addition, the CAMDT also translates crop model outputs to economic terms once the user provides expected crop price and cost. The CAMDT is a practical tool for real-world applications, specifically for agricultural climate risk management in the Bicol region, Philippines, having a great flexibility for being adapted to other crops or regions in the world. CAMDT GitHub: https://github.com/Agro-Climate/CAMDT

A climate responsive urban design tool: a platform to improve energy efficiency in a dry hot climate

Science.gov (United States)

El Dallal, Norhan; Visser, Florentine

2017-09-01

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, new urban developments should address the climatic conditions to improve outdoor comfort and to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. This article describes a design tool that supports climate responsive design for a dry hot climate. The approach takes the climate as an initiator for the conceptual urban form with a more energy-efficient urban morphology. The methodology relates the different passive strategies suitable for major climate conditions in MENA region (dry-hot) to design parameters that create the urban form. This parametric design approach is the basis for a tool that generates conceptual climate responsive urban forms so as to assist the urban designer early in the design process. Various conceptual scenarios, generated by a computational model, are the results of the proposed platform. A practical application of the approach is conducted on a New Urban Community in Aswan (Egypt), showing the economic feasibility of the resulting urban form and morphology, and the proposed tool.

EVALUATION TOOL OF CLIMATE POTENTIAL FOR VENTILATIVE COOLING

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Belleri, Annamaria; Psomas, Theofanis Ch.; Heiselberg, Per Kvols

2015-01-01

. Within IEA Annex 62 project, national experts are working on the development of a climate evaluation tool, which aims at assessing the potential of ventilative cooling by taking into account also building envelope thermal properties, internal gains and ventilation needs. The analysis is based on a single......-zone thermal model applied to user-input climatic data on hourly basis. The tool identifies the percentage of hours when natural ventilation can be exploited to assure minimum air change rates required by state of the art research, standards and regulations and the percentage of hours when direct ventilative...

NOAA Climate Information and Tools for Decision Support Services

Science.gov (United States)

Timofeyeva, M. M.; Higgins, W.; Strager, C.; Horsfall, F. M.

2013-12-01

provision of information that will help guide long-term preparedness for severe weather events and extreme conditions as well as climate variability and change GFCS recently summarized examples of existing initiatives to advance provision of climate services in the 2012 publication Climate ExChange. In this publication, NWS introduced the new Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT), a tool that is used to conduct local climate studies that are needed to create efficient and reliable guidance for DSS. LCAT allows for analyzing trends in local climate variables and identifying local impacts of climate variability (e.g., ENSO) on weather and water conditions. In addition to LCAT, NWS, working in partnership with the North East Regional Climate center, released xmACIS version 2, a climate data mining tool, for NWS field operations. During this talk we will demonstrate LCAT and xmACIS as well as outline several examples of their application to DSS and its potential use for achieving GFCS goals. The examples include LCAT-based temperature analysis for energy decisions, guidance on weather and water events leading to increased algal blooms and red tide months in advance, local climate sensitivities to droughts, probabilities of hot/cold conditions and their potential impacts on agriculture and fish kills or fish stress.

Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) Final Report

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Williams, Dean N. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

2014-05-19

A partnership across government, academic, and private sectors has created a novel system that enables climate researchers to solve current and emerging data analysis and visualization challenges. The Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) software project utilizes the Python application programming interface (API) combined with C/C++/Fortran implementations for performance-critical software that offers the best compromise between "scalability" and “ease-of-use.” The UV-CDAT system is highly extensible and customizable for high-performance interactive and batch visualization and analysis for climate science and other disciplines of geosciences. For complex, climate data-intensive computing, UV-CDAT’s inclusive framework supports Message Passing Interface (MPI) parallelism as well as taskfarming and other forms of parallelism. More specifically, the UV-CDAT framework supports the execution of Python scripts running in parallel using the MPI executable commands and leverages Department of Energy (DOE)-funded general-purpose, scalable parallel visualization tools such as ParaView and VisIt. This is the first system to be successfully designed in this way and with these features. The climate community leverages these tools and others, in support of a parallel client-server paradigm, allowing extreme-scale, server-side computing for maximum possible speed-up.

Online and classroom tools for Climate Change Education

Science.gov (United States)

Samenow, J. P.; Scott, K.

2004-12-01

EPA's Office of Atmospheric Programs has developed unique tools for educating students about the science of global warming and on actions that help address the issue. These tools have been highly successful and used in hundreds of classrooms across the country. EPA's Global Warming Kids' Site features interactive web-based animations for educating children, grades 4-8, about climate change. The animations illustrate how human activities likely influence the climate system through processes such as the greenhouse effect and carbon and water cycles. The pages also contain interactive quizzes. See: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/animations.html For advanced high school and college students, EPA is nearing completion on the development of interactive visualizations of the emissions and climate scenarios featured in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report. These visualizations allow students to choose a scenario and see how emissions, the climate and the earth's surface change over time. The Global Warming Wheelcard Classroom Activity Kit is designed to help teachers of middle school students introduce the concept of human induced global warming in the context of how rates of energy usage can influence the increase or eventual slowing of climate change. The Climate Change, Wildlife, and Wildlands Toolkit for Teachers and Interpreters was produced in a partnership among three agencies - EPA, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service (NPS). Both classroom teachers and outdoor interpreters find it useful in conveying information about climate change science and impacts to their students and visitors. The development of the toolkit led to a larger program between EPA and NPS that assists parks in inventorying their emissions, creating action plans, and talking to the public about what they are doing - a "lead by example" type program that the two agencies hope to replicate in other venues in the coming year.

Climate Change Adaptation Tools at the Community Level: An Integrated Literature Review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elvis Modikela Nkoana

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The negative impacts of climate change are experienced at the global, regional and local levels. However, rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa face additional socio-political, cultural and economic challenges in addition to climate change. Decision support tools have been developed and applied to assist rural communities to cope with and adapt to climate change. However, poorly planned participatory processes and the lack of context-specific approaches in these tools are obstacles when aiming at strengthening the resilience of these rural communities. This paper uses an integrated literature review to identify best practices for involving rural communities in climate change adaptation efforts through the application of context-specific and culturally-sensitive climate change adaptation tools. These best practices include the use of a livelihoods approach to engage communities; the explicit acknowledgement of the local cultural do’s and don’ts; the recognition of local champions appointed from within the local community; the identification and prioritisation of vulnerable stakeholders; and the implementation of a two-way climate change risk communication instead of a one-sided information sharing approach.

PatternCoder: A Programming Support Tool for Learning Binary Class Associations and Design Patterns

Science.gov (United States)

Paterson, J. H.; Cheng, K. F.; Haddow, J.

2009-01-01

PatternCoder is a software tool to aid student understanding of class associations. It has a wizard-based interface which allows students to select an appropriate binary class association or design pattern for a given problem. Java code is then generated which allows students to explore the way in which the class associations are implemented in a…

Developing and Validating a New Classroom Climate Observation Assessment Tool.

Science.gov (United States)

Leff, Stephen S; Thomas, Duane E; Shapiro, Edward S; Paskewich, Brooke; Wilson, Kim; Necowitz-Hoffman, Beth; Jawad, Abbas F

2011-01-01

The climate of school classrooms, shaped by a combination of teacher practices and peer processes, is an important determinant for children's psychosocial functioning and is a primary factor affecting bullying and victimization. Given that there are relatively few theoretically-grounded and validated assessment tools designed to measure the social climate of classrooms, our research team developed an observation tool through participatory action research (PAR). This article details how the assessment tool was designed and preliminarily validated in 18 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms in a large urban public school district. The goals of this study are to illustrate the feasibility of a PAR paradigm in measurement development, ascertain the psychometric properties of the assessment tool, and determine associations with different indices of classroom levels of relational and physical aggression.

Collaboration pathway(s) using new tools for optimizing `operational' climate monitoring from space

Science.gov (United States)

Helmuth, Douglas B.; Selva, Daniel; Dwyer, Morgan M.

2015-09-01

Consistently collecting the earth's climate signatures remains a priority for world governments and international scientific organizations. Architecting a long term solution requires transforming scientific missions into an optimized robust `operational' constellation that addresses the collective needs of policy makers, scientific communities and global academic users for trusted data. The application of new tools offers pathways for global architecture collaboration. Recent rule-based expert system (RBES) optimization modeling of the intended NPOESS architecture becomes a surrogate for global operational climate monitoring architecture(s). These rulebased systems tools provide valuable insight for global climate architectures, by comparison/evaluation of alternatives and the sheer range of trade space explored. Optimization of climate monitoring architecture(s) for a partial list of ECV (essential climate variables) is explored and described in detail with dialogue on appropriate rule-based valuations. These optimization tool(s) suggest global collaboration advantages and elicit responses from the audience and climate science community. This paper will focus on recent research exploring joint requirement implications of the high profile NPOESS architecture and extends the research and tools to optimization for a climate centric case study. This reflects work from SPIE RS Conferences 2013 and 2014, abridged for simplification30, 32. First, the heavily securitized NPOESS architecture; inspired the recent research question - was Complexity (as a cost/risk factor) overlooked when considering the benefits of aggregating different missions into a single platform. Now years later a complete reversal; should agencies considering Disaggregation as the answer. We'll discuss what some academic research suggests. Second, using the GCOS requirements of earth climate observations via ECV (essential climate variables) many collected from space-based sensors; and accepting their

A Climate Statistics Tool and Data Repository

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, J.; Kotamarthi, V. R.; Kuiper, J. A.; Orr, A.

2017-12-01

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory and collaborating organizations have generated regional scale, dynamically downscaled climate model output using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) version 3.3.1 at a 12km horizontal spatial resolution over much of North America. The WRF model is driven by boundary conditions obtained from three independent global scale climate models and two different future greenhouse gas emission scenarios, named representative concentration pathways (RCPs). The repository of results has a temporal resolution of three hours for all the simulations, includes more than 50 variables, is stored in Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) files, and the data volume is nearly 600Tb. A condensed 800Gb set of NetCDF files were made for selected variables most useful for climate-related planning, including daily precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and wind. The WRF model simulations are conducted for three 10-year time periods (1995-2004, 2045-2054, and 2085-2094), and two future scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). An open-source tool was coded using Python 2.7.8 and ESRI ArcGIS 10.3.1 programming libraries to parse the NetCDF files, compute summary statistics, and output results as GIS layers. Eight sets of summary statistics were generated as examples for the contiguous U.S. states and much of Alaska, including number of days over 90°F, number of days with a heat index over 90°F, heat waves, monthly and annual precipitation, drought, extreme precipitation, multi-model averages, and model bias. This paper will provide an overview of the project to generate the main and condensed data repositories, describe the Python tool and how to use it, present the GIS results of the computed examples, and discuss some of the ways they can be used for planning. The condensed climate data, Python tool, computed GIS results, and documentation of the work are shared on the Internet.

Climate-Smart Seedlot Selection Tool: Reforestation and Restoration for the 21st Century

Science.gov (United States)

Stevenson-Molnar, N.; Howe, G.; St Clair, B.; Bachelet, D. M.; Ward, B. C.

2017-12-01

Local populations of trees are generally adapted to their local climates. Historically, this has meant that local seed zones based on geography and elevation have been used to guide restoration and reforestation. In the face of climate change, seeds from local sources will likely be subjected to climates significantly different from those to which they are currently adapted. The Seedlot Selection Tool (SST) offers a new approach for matching seed sources with planting sites based on future climate scenarios. The SST is a mapping program designed for forest managers and researchers. Users can use the tool to to find seedlots for a given planting site, or to find potential planting sites for a given seedlot. Users select a location (seedlot or planting site), climate scenarios (a climate to which seeds are adapted, and a current or future climate scenario), climate variables, and transfer limits (the maximum climatic distance that is considered a suitable match). Transfer limits are provided by the user, or derived from the range of values within a geographically defined seed zone. The tool calculates scores across the landscape based on an area's similarity, in a multivariate climate space, to the input. Users can explore results on an interactive map, and export PDF and PowerPoint reports, including a map of the results along with the inputs used. Planned future improvements include support for non-forest use cases and ability to download results as GeoTIFF data. The Seedlot Selection Tool and its source code are available online at https://seedlotselectiontool.org. It is co-developed by the United States Forest Service, Oregon State University, and the Conservation Biology Institute.

The Climate Data Analysis Tools (CDAT): Scientific Discovery Made Easy

Science.gov (United States)

Doutriaux, C. M.; Williams, D. N.; Drach, R. S.; McCoy, R. B.; Mlaker, V.

2008-12-01

In recent years, amount of data available to climate scientists has grown exponentially. Whether we're looking at the increasing number of organizations providing data, the finer resolutions of climate models, or the escalating number of experiments and realizations for those experiments, every aspect of climate research leads to an unprecedented growth of the volume of data to analyze. The recent success and visibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Annual Report 4 (IPCC AR4) is boosting the demand to unprecedented levels and keeping the numbers increasing. Meanwhile, technology available for scientists to analyze the data has remained largely unchanged since the early days. One tool, however, has proven itself flexible enough not only to follow the trend of escalating demand, but also to be ahead of the game: the Climate Data Analysis Tools (CDAT) from the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Comparison (PCMDI). While providing the cutting edge technology necessary to distribute the IPCC AR4 data via the Earth System Grid, PCMDI has continuously evolved CDAT to handle new grids and higher definitions, and provide new diagnostics. In the near future, in time for AR5, PCMDI will use CDAT for state-of-the-art remote data analysis in a grid computing environment.

Novel Tools for Climate Change Learning and Responding in Earth Science Education

Science.gov (United States)

Sparrow, Elena; Brunacini, Jessica; Pfirman, Stephanie

2015-04-01

Several innovative, polar focused activities and tools including a polar hub website (http://thepolarhub.org) have been developed for use in formal and informal earth science or STEM education by the Polar Learning and Responding (PoLAR) Climate Change Education Partnership (consisting of climate scientists, experts in the learning sciences and education practitioners). In seeking to inform understanding of and response to climate change, these tools and activities range from increasing awareness to informing decisions about climate change, from being used in classrooms (by undergraduate students as well as by pre-college students or by teachers taking online climate graduate courses) to being used in the public arena (by stakeholders, community members and the general public), and from using low technology (card games such as EcoChains- Arctic Crisis, a food web game or SMARTIC - Strategic Management of Resources in Times of Change, an Arctic marine spatial planning game) to high technology (Greenify Network - a mobile real world action game that fosters sustainability and allows players to meaningfully address climate change in their daily lives, or the Polar Explorer Data Visualization Tablet App that allows individuals to explore data collected by scientists and presented for the everyday user through interactive maps and visualizations, to ask questions and go on an individualized tour of polar regions and their connections to the rest of the world). Games are useful tools in integrative and applied learning, in gaining practical and intellectual skills, and in systems thinking. Also, as part of the PoLAR Partnership, a Signs of the Land Climate Change Camp was collaboratively developed and conducted, that can be used as a model for engaging and representing indigenous communities in the co-production of climate change knowledge, communication tools and solutions building. Future camps are planned with Alaska Native Elders, educators including classroom

Decision support tools : midterm review report Knowledge for Climate Theme 8

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ierland, van E.C.

2012-01-01

The KfC program Decision Support Tools aims at improving tools for design and evaluation of adaptation strategies with a special focus on spatial planning and cross cutting issues. The program focuses on three core elements 1. tools for formulation of the adaptation task, based on climate scenarios

Isotopes as validation tools for global climate models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Henderson-Sellers, A.

2001-01-01

Global Climate Models (GCMs) are the predominant tool with which we predict the future climate. In order that people can have confidence in such predictions, GCMs require validation. As almost every available item of meteorological data has been exploited in the construction and tuning of GCMs to date, independent validation is very difficult. This paper explores the use of isotopes as a novel and fully independent means of evaluating GCMs. The focus is the Amazon Basin which has a long history of isotope collection and analysis and also of climate modelling: both having been reported for over thirty years. Careful consideration of the results of GCM simulations of Amazonian deforestation and climate change suggests that the recent stable isotope record is more consistent with the predicted effects of greenhouse warming, possibly combined with forest removal, than with GCM predictions of the effects of deforestation alone

Climate change games as tools for education and engagement

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Jason S.; Lee, Joey J.

2015-05-01

Scientists, educators and policymakers continue to face challenges when it comes to finding effective strategies to engage the public on climate change. We argue that games on the subject of climate change are well-suited to address these challenges because they can serve as effective tools for education and engagement. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the development of such games, many featuring innovative designs that blur traditional boundaries (for example, those that involve social media, alternative reality games, or those that involve direct action upon the real world). Here, we present an overview of the types of climate change game currently available, the benefits and trade-offs of their use, and reasons why they hold such promise for education and engagement regarding climate change.

Central America Regional Climate Change Program: Tools for Your Use

Science.gov (United States)

Irwin, Dan; Irving, Bill; Yeager, Carey

2006-01-01

USAID/E-CAM and EGAT's Global Climate Change Team, in partnership with EPA, NASA, Oak Ridge National Lab, and the Central American Commission for Environment and Development (CCAD), have had a significant impact on the region's ability to monitor, mitigate, and adapt to environmental threats. Environmental decision-making tools and data are posted on a website (SERVIR: http://servir.nsstc.nasa.pov/home.html)that provides satellite and geographic data and maps to anybody with an Internet connection. The SERVIR program has been identified as the model for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) - a major international effort to develop a 21st century system for environmental management and disaster response. In coordination with the USAID/EPA program, NASA has developed a GIs tool that enables countries to examine their forest cover and document changes on an annual basis. This information is used in calculating carbon emissions as part of greenhouse gas inventories, but also serves a valuable monitoring function. In addition, USAID/E-CAM and EGAT's Global Climate Change Team in collaboration with EPA are helping countries meet their obligations as signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). EPA is assisting Central American governments to improve the quality of their greenhouse gas emission inventories reported to the UNFCCC through the development of tools and improvements in data quality. New EPA tools developed include software to automatically calculate greenhouse gas emissions for the agricultural and forestry sector inventories, determine key sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and document institutional arrangements. Several of these tools are state of the art and are comparable to tools currently used in the U.S.

Decision-support tools for climate change mitigation planning

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Puig, Daniel; Aparcana Robles, Sandra Roxana

. For example, in the case of life-cycle analysis, the evaluation criterion entails that the impacts of interest are examined across the entire life-cycle of the product under study, from extraction of raw materials, to product disposal. Effectively, then, the choice of decision-support tool directs......This document describes three decision-support tools that can aid the process of planning climate change mitigation actions. The phrase ‘decision-support tools’ refers to science-based analytical procedures that facilitate the evaluation of planning options (individually or compared to alternative...... options) against a particular evaluation criterion or set of criteria. Most often decision-support tools are applied with the help of purpose-designed software packages and drawing on specialised databases.The evaluation criteria alluded to above define and characterise each decision-support tool...

Greenhouse effect gases and climatic change: quantification and tools to fight against the emissions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bizec, R.F.

2006-01-01

The greenhouse effect gases are considered responsible of the climatic change. Their consequences are numerous: increase of the sea level, displacement of the climatic areas, modification of the forests ecosystems, rarefaction of water, progressively decrease of glaciers... This fast modification of the climate would lead to the increase of natural hazards as hurricanes, storms, hails and so on. It is then a necessity to reduce as fast as possible the greenhouse effect gases. The author describes in a first part the methods of the greenhouse effect gases quantification and in the second part the tools to fight these gases, regulations, standards, economic tools, national tools and the projects. (A.L.B.)

AN INTEGRATIVE GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY PROGRAM FOR CHILDREN. THE WIZARDING SCHOOL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oana Maria Popescu

2012-02-01

Full Text Available One of the most important tendencies in child psychotherapy is the integration of various psychotherapeutic approaches and technical interventions belonging to different orientations. Based on the Harry Potter stories, the „Wizarding School” structured group therapy program is a 12-step integratively oriented program applicable in personal development, individual and group therapy for children aged 6 to 13 (at present being adapted for adult psychotherapy. The program takes place within a fairy tale, being therefore a type of informal hypnotic trance. The interventions are drawn from the lessons described in Harry Potter’s story at Hogwarts, based on the fundamental principles of child psychotherapy and including elements of play therapy, art therapy, hypnotherapy, cognitive- behavioural therapy, transactional analysis, supportive therapy, family therapy and person centred therapy. From a theoretical point of view the program is based on elements from a number of psychotherapeutic approaches, the main concept being that we need to create a therapeutic myth that is acceptable to a child. The program is not suitable for children with structural deficits, who have difficulties in making the difference between fantasy and reality.

Climate tools in mainstream Linux distributions

Science.gov (United States)

McKinstry, Alastair

2015-04-01

Debian/meterology is a project to integrate climate tools and analysis software into the mainstream Debian/Ubuntu Linux distributions. This work describes lessons learnt, and recommends practices for scientific software to be adopted and maintained in OS distributions. In addition to standard analysis tools (cdo,, grads, ferret, metview, ncl, etc.), software used by the Earth System Grid Federation was chosen for integraion, to enable ESGF portals to be built on this base; however exposing scientific codes via web APIs enables security weaknesses, normally ignorable, to be exposed. How tools are hardened, and what changes are required to handle security upgrades, are described. Secondly, to enable libraries and components (e.g. Python modules) to be integrated requires planning by writers: it is not sufficient to assume users can upgrade their code when you make incompatible changes. Here, practices are recommended to enable upgrades and co-installability of C, C++, Fortran and Python codes. Finally, software packages such as NetCDF and HDF5 can be built in multiple configurations. Tools may then expect incompatible versions of these libraries (e.g. serial and parallel) to be simultaneously available; how this was solved in Debian using "pkg-config" and shared library interfaces is described, and best practices for software writers to enable this are summarised.

Decision-support tools for Extreme Weather and Climate Events in the Northeast United States

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, S.; Lowery, M.; Whelchel, A.

2013-12-01

Decision-support tools were assessed for the 2013 National Climate Assessment technical input document, "Climate Change in the Northeast, A Sourcebook". The assessment included tools designed to generate and deliver actionable information to assist states and highly populated urban and other communities in assessment of climate change vulnerability and risk, quantification of effects, and identification of adaptive strategies in the context of adaptation planning across inter-annual, seasonal and multi-decadal time scales. State-level adaptation planning in the Northeast has generally relied on qualitative vulnerability assessments by expert panels and stakeholders, although some states have undertaken initiatives to develop statewide databases to support vulnerability assessments by urban and local governments, and state agencies. The devastation caused by Superstorm Sandy in October 2012 has raised awareness of the potential for extreme weather events to unprecedented levels and created urgency for action, especially in coastal urban and suburban communities that experienced pronounced impacts - especially in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. Planning approaches vary, but any adaptation and resiliency planning process must include the following: - Knowledge of the probable change in a climate variable (e.g., precipitation, temperature, sea-level rise) over time or that the climate variable will attain a certain threshold deemed to be significant; - Knowledge of intensity and frequency of climate hazards (past, current or future events or conditions with potential to cause harm) and their relationship with climate variables; - Assessment of climate vulnerabilities (sensitive resources, infrastructure or populations exposed to climate-related hazards); - Assessment of relative risks to vulnerable resources; - Identification and prioritization of adaptive strategies to address risks. Many organizations are developing decision-support tools to assist in the urban

Cyclones, bi-cycles, and psychoanalysis: the witch-of-us? complex and The Wizard of Oz.

Science.gov (United States)

Stern, Jeffrey

2003-01-01

Works of applied psychoanalysis normally use psychoanalytic theory to reveal the secret meanings of works of art. An attempt is made to reverse the directionality of such analyses and see whether a work of art, The Wizard of Oz, has something to teach psychoanalysis about adolescent female psychosexual development. The author argues that the popularity and importance of the film is an effect of its symbolic representation of a girl's entry into menarche, and the meaning of this milestone for herself and for her mother. He addresses ideas about feminine castration fears (or what more recently have been called fears of genital injury), issues about menopause, and fantasies--both surprising and violent--around the meanings of menarche for both mother and daughter.

Automated PCR setup for forensic casework samples using the Normalization Wizard and PCR Setup robotic methods.

Science.gov (United States)

Greenspoon, S A; Sykes, K L V; Ban, J D; Pollard, A; Baisden, M; Farr, M; Graham, N; Collins, B L; Green, M M; Christenson, C C

2006-12-20

Human genome, pharmaceutical and research laboratories have long enjoyed the application of robotics to performing repetitive laboratory tasks. However, the utilization of robotics in forensic laboratories for processing casework samples is relatively new and poses particular challenges. Since the quantity and quality (a mixture versus a single source sample, the level of degradation, the presence of PCR inhibitors) of the DNA contained within a casework sample is unknown, particular attention must be paid to procedural susceptibility to contamination, as well as DNA yield, especially as it pertains to samples with little biological material. The Virginia Department of Forensic Science (VDFS) has successfully automated forensic casework DNA extraction utilizing the DNA IQ(trade mark) System in conjunction with the Biomek 2000 Automation Workstation. Human DNA quantitation is also performed in a near complete automated fashion utilizing the AluQuant Human DNA Quantitation System and the Biomek 2000 Automation Workstation. Recently, the PCR setup for casework samples has been automated, employing the Biomek 2000 Automation Workstation and Normalization Wizard, Genetic Identity version, which utilizes the quantitation data, imported into the software, to create a customized automated method for DNA dilution, unique to that plate of DNA samples. The PCR Setup software method, used in conjunction with the Normalization Wizard method and written for the Biomek 2000, functions to mix the diluted DNA samples, transfer the PCR master mix, and transfer the diluted DNA samples to PCR amplification tubes. Once the process is complete, the DNA extracts, still on the deck of the robot in PCR amplification strip tubes, are transferred to pre-labeled 1.5 mL tubes for long-term storage using an automated method. The automation of these steps in the process of forensic DNA casework analysis has been accomplished by performing extensive optimization, validation and testing of the

Developing tools and strategies for communicating climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Bader, D.; Yam, E. M.; Perkins, L.

2011-12-01

Research indicates that the public views zoos and aquariums as reliable and trusted sources for information on conservation. Additionally, visiting zoos and aquariums helps people reconsider their connections to conservation issues and solutions. The Aquarium of the Pacific, an AZA-accredited institution that serves the most ethnically diverse population of all aquariums in the nation, is using exhibit space, technology, public programming, and staff professional development to present a model for how aquariums can promote climate literacy. Our newest galleries and programs are designed to immerse our visitors in experiences that connect our live animal collection to larger themes on ocean change. The Aquarium is supporting our new programming with a multifaceted staff professional development that exposes our interpretive staff to current climate science and researchers as well as current social science on public perception of climate science. Our staff also leads workshops for scientists; these sessions allow us to examine learning theory and develop tools to communicate science and controversial subjects effectively. Through our partnerships in the science, social science, and informal science education communities, we are working to innovate and develop best practices in climate communication.

Tools and Techniques for Basin-Scale Climate Change Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Zagona, E.; Rajagopalan, B.; Oakley, W.; Wilson, N.; Weinstein, P.; Verdin, A.; Jerla, C.; Prairie, J. R.

2012-12-01

The Department of Interior's WaterSMART Program seeks to secure and stretch water supplies to benefit future generations and identify adaptive measures to address climate change. Under WaterSMART, Basin Studies are comprehensive water studies to explore options for meeting projected imbalances in water supply and demand in specific basins. Such studies could be most beneficial with application of recent scientific advances in climate projections, stochastic simulation, operational modeling and robust decision-making, as well as computational techniques to organize and analyze many alternatives. A new integrated set of tools and techniques to facilitate these studies includes the following components: Future supply scenarios are produced by the Hydrology Simulator, which uses non-parametric K-nearest neighbor resampling techniques to generate ensembles of hydrologic traces based on historical data, optionally conditioned on long paleo reconstructed data using various Markov Chain techniuqes. Resampling can also be conditioned on climate change projections from e.g., downscaled GCM projections to capture increased variability; spatial and temporal disaggregation is also provided. The simulations produced are ensembles of hydrologic inputs to the RiverWare operations/infrastucture decision modeling software. Alternative demand scenarios can be produced with the Demand Input Tool (DIT), an Excel-based tool that allows modifying future demands by groups such as states; sectors, e.g., agriculture, municipal, energy; and hydrologic basins. The demands can be scaled at future dates or changes ramped over specified time periods. Resulting data is imported directly into the decision model. Different model files can represent infrastructure alternatives and different Policy Sets represent alternative operating policies, including options for noticing when conditions point to unacceptable vulnerabilities, which trigger dynamically executing changes in operations or other

Leveraging federal science data and tools to help communities & business build climate resilience

Science.gov (United States)

Herring, D.

2016-12-01

Decision-makers in every sector and region of the United States are seeking actionable science-based information to help them understand and manage their climate-related risks. Translating data, tools and information from the domain of climate science to the domains of municipal, social, and economic decision-making raises complex questions—e.g., how to communicate causes and impacts of climate variability and change; how to show projections of plausible future climate scenarios; how to characterize and quantify vulnerabilities, risks, and opportunities facing communities and businesses; and how to make and implement "win-win" adaptation plans. These are the types of challenges being addressed by a public-private partnership of federal agencies, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and private businesses that are contributing to the development of the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit (toolkit.climate.gov), a new website designed to help people build resilience to extreme events caused by both natural climate variability and long-term climate change. The site's Climate Explorer is designed to help people understand potential climate conditions over the course of this century. It offers easy access to downloadable maps, graphs, and data tables of observed and projected temperature, precipitation and other decision-relevant climate variables dating back to 1950 and out to 2100. Of course, climate change is only one of many variables affecting decisions about the future so the Toolkit also ties climate information to a wide range of other relevant tools and information to help users to explore their vulnerabilities and risks. In this session, we will describe recent enhancements to the Toolkit, lessons learned from user engagements, and evidence that our approach of coupling scientific information with actionable decision-making processes is helping Americans build resilience to climate-related impacts.

Climate-responsive design: A framework for an energy concept design-decision support tool for architects using principles of climate-responsive design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Remco Looman

2017-01-01

Full Text Available In climate-responsive design the building becomes an intermediary in its own energy housekeeping, forming a link between the harvest of climate resources and low energy provision of comfort. Essential here is the employment of climate-responsive building elements, defined as structural and architectural elements in which the energy infrastructure is far-reaching integrated. This thesis presents the results of research conducted on what knowledge is needed in the early stages of the design process and how to transfer and transform that knowledge to the field of the architect in order for them to successfully implement the principles of climate-responsive design. The derived content, form and functional requirements provide the framework for a design decision support tool. These requirements were incorporated into a concept tool that has been presented to architects in the field, in order to gain their feedback. Climate-responsive design makes the complex task of designing even more complex. Architects are helped when sufficient information on the basics of climate-responsive design and its implications are provided as informative support during decision making in the early design stages of analysis and energy concept development. This informative support on climate-responsive design should address to different design styles in order to be useful to any type of architects. What is defined as comfortable has far-reaching implications for the way buildings are designed and how they operate. This in turn gives an indication of the energy used for maintaining a comfortable indoor environment. Comfort is not a strict situation, but subjective. Diversity is appreciated and comfort is improved when users have the ability to exert influence on their environment. Historically, the provision of comfort has led to the adoption of mechanical climate control systems that operate in many cases indifferent from the building space and mass and its environment

Tools for Assessing the Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Wildfire Regimes in Forests

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hety Herawati

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Fire is an intrinsic element of many forest ecosystems; it shapes their ecological processes, determines species composition and influences landscape structure. However, wildfires may: have undesirable effects on biodiversity and vegetation coverage; produce carbon emissions to the atmosphere; release smoke affecting human health; and cause loss of lives and property. There have been increasing concerns about the potential impacts of climate variability and change on forest fires. Climate change can alter factors that influence the occurrence of fire ignitions, fuel availability and fuel flammability. This review paper aims to identify tools and methods used for gathering information about the impacts of climate variability and change on forest fires, forest fuels and the probability of fires. Tools to assess the impacts of climate variability and change on forest fires include: remote sensing, dynamic global vegetation and landscape models, integrated fire-vegetation models, fire danger rating systems, empirical models and fire behavior models. This review outlines each tool in terms of its characteristics, spatial and temporal resolution, limitations and applicability of the results. To enhance and improve tool performance, each must be continuously tested in all types of forest ecosystems.

CLIMCONG: A framework-tool for assessing CLIMate CONGruency

Science.gov (United States)

Buras, Allan; Kölling, Christian; Menzel, Annette

2016-04-01

It is widely accepted that the anticipated elevational and latitudinal shifting of climate forces living organisms (including humans) to track these changes in space over a certain time. Due to the complexity of climate change, prediction of consequent migrations is a difficult procedure afflicted with many uncertainties. To simplify climate complexity and ease respective attempts, various approaches aimed at classifying global climates. For instance, the frequently used Köppen-Geiger climate classification (Köppen, 1900) has been applied to predict the shift of climate zones throughout the 21st century (Rubel and Kottek, 2010). Another - more objective but also more complex - classification approach has recently been presented by Metzger et al. (2013). Though being comprehensive, classifications have certain drawbacks, as I) often focusing on few variables, II) having discrete borders at the margins of classes, and III) subjective selection of an arbitrary number of classes. Ecological theory suggests that when only considering temperature and precipitation (such as Köppen, 1900) particular climate features - e.g. radiation and plant water availability - may not be represented with sufficient precision. Furthermore, sharp boundaries among homogeneous classes do not reflect natural gradients. To overcome the aforementioned drawbacks, we here present CLIMCONG - a framework-tool for assessing climate congruency for quantitatively describing climate similarity through continua in space and time. CLIMCONG allows users to individually select variables for calculation of climate congruency. By this, particular foci can be specified, depending on actual research questions posed towards climate change. For instance, while ecologists focus on a multitude of parameters driving net ecosystem productivity, water managers may only be interested in variables related to drought extremes and water availability. Based on the chosen parameters CLIMCONG determines congruency of

Collaborative use of geodesign tools to support decision-making on adaptation to climate change

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eikelboom, T.; Janssen, R.

2017-01-01

Spatial planners around the world need to make climate change adaptation plans. Climate adaptation planning requires combining spatial information with stakeholder values. This study demonstrates the potential of geodesign tools as a mean to integrate spatial analysis with stakeholder participation

A web-tool to find spatially explicit climate-smart solutions for the sector agriculture

Science.gov (United States)

Verzandvoort, Simone; Kuikman, Peter; Walvoort, Dennis

2017-04-01

Europe faces the challenge to produce more food and more biomass for the bio-economy, to adapt its agricultural sector to negative consequences of climate change, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) solutions and technologies improve agriculture's productivity and provide economic growth and stability, increase resilience, and help to reduce GHG emissions from agricultural activities. The Climate Smart Agriculture Booster (CSAb) (http://csabooster.climate-kic.org/) is a Flagship Program under Climate-KIC, aiming to facilitate the adoption of CSA solutions and technologies in the European agro-food sector. This adoption requires spatially explicit, contextual information on farming activities and risks and opportunities related to climate change in regions across Europe. Other spatial information supporting adoption includes Information on where successful implementations were already done, on where CSA would profit from enabling policy conditions, and where markets or business opportunities for selling or purchasing technology and knowledge are located or emerging. The Spatial Solution Finder is a web-based spatial tool aiming to help agri-food companies (supply and processing), authorities or agricultural organisations find CSA solutions and technologies that fit local farmers and regions, and to demonstrate examples of successful implementations as well as expected impact at the farm and regional level. The tool is based on state of the art (geo)datasets of environmental and socio-economic conditions (partly open access, partly derived from previous research) and open source web-technology. The philosophy of the tool is that combining existing datasets with contextual information on the region of interest with personalized information entered by the user provides a suitable basis for offering a basket of options for CSA solutions and technologies. Solutions and technologies are recommended to the user based on

Climate Project Screening Tool

Science.gov (United States)

Forest Service U.S. Department of Agriculture

2011-01-01

Climate change poses a challenge for resource managers as they review current management practices. Adaptation is a critical means of addressing climate change in the near future because, due to inherent time lags in climate impacts, the effects of increased atmospheric greenhouse gases will be felt for decades even if effective mitigation begins now. To address the...

Parallel analysis tools and new visualization techniques for ultra-large climate data set

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Middleton, Don [National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Haley, Mary [National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)

2014-12-10

ParVis was a project funded under LAB 10-05: “Earth System Modeling: Advanced Scientific Visualization of Ultra-Large Climate Data Sets”. Argonne was the lead lab with partners at PNNL, SNL, NCAR and UC-Davis. This report covers progress from January 1st, 2013 through Dec 1st, 2014. Two previous reports covered the period from Summer, 2010, through September 2011 and October 2011 through December 2012, respectively. While the project was originally planned to end on April 30, 2013, personnel and priority changes allowed many of the institutions to continue work through FY14 using existing funds. A primary focus of ParVis was introducing parallelism to climate model analysis to greatly reduce the time-to-visualization for ultra-large climate data sets. Work in the first two years was conducted on two tracks with different time horizons: one track to provide immediate help to climate scientists already struggling to apply their analysis to existing large data sets and another focused on building a new data-parallel library and tool for climate analysis and visualization that will give the field a platform for performing analysis and visualization on ultra-large datasets for the foreseeable future. In the final 2 years of the project, we focused mostly on the new data-parallel library and associated tools for climate analysis and visualization.

The adaptation of cities to climate change: appropriating the tools and accessing financing

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Depoues, Vivian; Leseur, Alexia

2015-12-01

Cities and urban areas are particularly affected because of their geographical location and the large share of the population and economic activities they bring together. This Climate Report provides a synthetic and problematized review of the literature on climate change adaptation at the urban scale, the tools and resources available to cities to implement strategies and adaptation actions. It is primarily intended for local officials in French-speaking cities. It provides a checkpoint of current dynamics, questions the real ownership of these resources by local stakeholders and identifies the openings for: - monitoring and evaluation adaptation to climate change; - Understand and use economic analysis as a help to the decision; - Access to funding to implement adaptation actions. This overview of the literature provides elements to understand how cities take ownership of the tools to design, select, monitor and evaluate adaptation projects. It highlights a mismatch between the maturity of the tools inventory and of the guidance available and the actual demand of cities. Except in a few well documented pioneers cases, the process of appropriation of adaptation issues is still at a relatively upstream stage

State Wildlife Action Plans as Tools for Adapting to a Continuously Changing Climate

Science.gov (United States)

Metivier, D. W.; Yocum, H.; Ray, A. J.

2015-12-01

Public land management plans are potentially powerful policies for building sustainability and adaptive capacity. Land managers are recognizing the need to respond to numerous climate change impacts on natural and human systems. For the first time, in 2015, the federal government required each state to incorporate climate change into their State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAP) as a condition for funding. As important land management tools, SWAPs have the potential to guide state agencies in shaping and implementing practices for climate change adaptation. Intended to be revised every ten years, SWAPs can change as conditions and understanding of climate change evolves. This study asks what practices are states using to integrate climate change, and how does this vary between states? To answer this question, we conducted a broad analysis among seven states (CO, MT, NE, ND, SD, UT, WY) and a more in-depth analysis of four states (CO, ND, SD, WY). We use seven key factors that represent best practices for incorporating climate change identified in the literature. These best practices are species prioritization, key habitats, threats, monitoring, partnerships and participation, identification of management options, and implementation of management options. The in-depth analysis focuses on how states are using climate change information for specific habitats addressed in the plans. We find that states are integrating climate change in many different ways, showing varying degrees of sophistication and preparedness. We summarize different practices and highlight opportunities to improve the effectiveness of plans through: communication tools across state lines and stakeholders, explicit targeting of key habitats, enforcement and monitoring progress and success, and conducting vulnerability analyses that incorporate topics beyond climate and include other drivers, trajectories, and implications of historic and future land-use change.

Web-based international knowledge exchange tool on urban resilience and climate proofing cities : climatescan

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boogaard, Floris; Tipping, Jonathan; Muthanna, T.; Duffy, A.; Bendall, Barry; Kluck, Jeroen

There is a wide diversity of projects undertaken to address urban resillience and climate proofing in the world. International knowledge exchange tools are evaluated with result: stakeholders demand tools that are interactive, open source and provide more detailed information (location, free photo

76 FR 71341 - BASINS and WEPP Climate Assessment Tools: Case Study Guide to Potential Applications

Science.gov (United States)

2011-11-17

... Climate Assessment Tools: Case Study Guide to Potential Applications AGENCY: Environmental Protection... Tools (CAT): Case Study Guide to Potential Applications (EPA/600/R-11/123A). EPA also is announcing that... report presents a series of short case studies designed to illustrate the capabilities of these tools for...

BASINS and WEPP Climate Assessment Tools (CAT): Case Study Guide to Potential Applications (External Review Draft)

Science.gov (United States)

This draft report supports application of two recently developed water modeling tools, the BASINS and WEPP climate assessment tools. The report presents a series of short case studies designed to illustrate the capabilities of these tools for conducting scenario based assessments...

BASINs and WEPP Climate Assessment Tools (CAT): Case Study Guide to Potential Applications (Final Report)

Science.gov (United States)

EPA announced the release of the final report, BASINs and WEPP Climate Assessment Tools (CAT): Case Study Guide to Potential Applications. This report supports application of two recently developed water modeling tools, the Better Assessment Science Integrating point & ...

Electronic Safety Resource Tools -- Supporting Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Commercialization

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Barilo, Nick F.

2014-09-29

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Hydrogen Safety Program conducted a planning session in Los Angeles, CA on April 1, 2014 to consider what electronic safety tools would benefit the next phase of hydrogen and fuel cell commercialization. A diverse, 20-person team led by an experienced facilitator considered the question as it applied to the eight most relevant user groups. The results and subsequent evaluation activities revealed several possible resource tools that could greatly benefit users. The tool identified as having the greatest potential for impact is a hydrogen safety portal, which can be the central location for integrating and disseminating safety information (including most of the tools identified in this report). Such a tool can provide credible and reliable information from a trustworthy source. Other impactful tools identified include a codes and standards wizard to guide users through a series of questions relating to application and specific features of the requirements; a scenario-based virtual reality training for first responders; peer networking tools to bring users from focused groups together to discuss and collaborate on hydrogen safety issues; and a focused tool for training inspectors. Table ES.1 provides results of the planning session, including proposed new tools and changes to existing tools.

Global Climate Models for the Classroom: The Educational Impact of Student Work with a Key Tool of Climate Scientists

Science.gov (United States)

Bush, D. F.; Sieber, R.; Seiler, G.; Chandler, M. A.; Chmura, G. L.

2017-12-01

Efforts to address climate change require public understanding of Earth and climate science. To meet this need, educators require instructional approaches and scientific technologies that overcome cultural barriers to impart conceptual understanding of the work of climate scientists. We compared student inquiry learning with now ubiquitous climate education toy models, data and tools against that which took place using a computational global climate model (GCM) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Our study at McGill University and John Abbott College in Montreal, QC sheds light on how best to teach the research processes important to Earth and climate scientists studying atmospheric and Earth system processes but ill-understood by those outside the scientific community. We followed a pre/post, control/treatment experimental design that enabled detailed analysis and statistically significant results. Our research found more students succeed at understanding climate change when exposed to actual climate research processes and instruments. Inquiry-based education with a GCM resulted in significantly higher scores pre to post on diagnostic exams (quantitatively) and more complete conceptual understandings (qualitatively). We recognize the difficulty in planning and teaching inquiry with complex technology and we also found evidence that lectures support learning geared toward assessment exams.

Tools for Local and Distributed Climate Data Access

Science.gov (United States)

Schweitzer, R.; O'Brien, K.; Burger, E. F.; Smith, K. M.; Manke, A. B.; Radhakrishnan, A.; Balaji, V.

2017-12-01

Last year we reported on our efforts to adapt existing tools to facilitate model development. During the lifecycle of a Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), data must be quality controlled before it can be published and studied. Like previous efforts, the next CMIP6 will produce an unprecedented volume of data. For an institution, modelling group or modeller the volume of data is unmanageable without tools that organize and automate as many processes as possible. Even if a modelling group has tools for data and metadata management, it often falls on individuals to do the initial quality assessment for a model run with bespoke tools. Using individually crafted tools can lead to interruptions when project personnel change and may result in inconsistencies and duplication of effort across groups. This talk will expand on our experiences using available tools (Ferret/PyFerret, the Live Access Server, the GFDL Curator, the GFDL Model Development Database Interface and the THREDDS Data Server) to seamlessly automate the data assembly process to give users "one-click" access to a rich suite of Web-based analysis and comparison tools. On the surface, it appears that this collection of tools is well suited to the task, but our experience of the last year taught us that the data volume and distributed storage adds a number of challenges in adapting the tools for this task. Quality control and initial evaluation add their own set of challenges. We will discuss how we addressed the needs of QC researchers by expanding standard tools to include specialized plots and leveraged the configurability of the tools to add specific user defined analysis operations so they are available to everyone using the system. We also report on our efforts to overcome some of the technical barriers for wide adoption of the tools by providing pre-built containers that are easily deployed in virtual machine and cloud environments. Finally, we will offer some suggestions for added features

A vulnerability tool for adapting water and aquatic resources to climate change and extremes on the Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming

Science.gov (United States)

Rice, J.; Joyce, L. A.; Armel, B.; Bevenger, G.; Zubic, R.

2011-12-01

Climate change introduces a significant challenge for land managers and decision makers managing the natural resources that provide many benefits from forests. These benefits include water for urban and agricultural uses, wildlife habitat, erosion and climate control, aquifer recharge, stream flows regulation, water temperature regulation, and cultural services such as outdoor recreation and aesthetic enjoyment. The Forest Service has responded to this challenge by developing a national strategy for responding to climate change (the National Roadmap for Responding to Climate Change, July 2010). In concert with this national strategy, the Forest Service's Westwide Climate Initiative has conducted 4 case studies on individual Forests in the western U.S to develop climate adaptation tools. Western National Forests are particularly vulnerable to climate change as they have high-mountain topography, diversity in climate and vegetation, large areas of water limited ecosystems, and increasing urbanization. Information about the vulnerability and capacity of resources to adapt to climate change and extremes is lacking. There is an urgent need to provide customized tools and synthesized local scale information about the impacts to resources from future climate change and extremes, as well as develop science based adaptation options and strategies in National Forest management and planning. The case study on the Shoshone National Forest has aligned its objectives with management needs by developing a climate extreme vulnerability tool that guides adaptation options development. The vulnerability tool determines the likely degree to which native Yellowstone cutthroat trout and water availability are susceptible to, or unable to cope with adverse effects of climate change extremes. We spatially categorize vulnerability for water and native trout resources using exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity indicators that use minimum and maximum climate and GIS data. Results

Flexible global ocean-atmosphere-land system model. A modeling tool for the climate change research community

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhou, Tianjun; Yu, Yongqiang; Liu, Yimin; Wang, Bin

2014-01-01

First book available on systematic evaluations of the performance of the global climate model FGOALS. Covers the whole field, ranging from the development to the applications of this climate system model. Provide an outlook for the future development of the FGOALS model system. Offers brief introduction about how to run FGOALS. Coupled climate system models are of central importance for climate studies. A new model known as FGOALS (the Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model), has been developed by the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (LASG/IAP, CAS), a first-tier national geophysical laboratory. It serves as a powerful tool, both for deepening our understanding of fundamental mechanisms of the climate system and for making decadal prediction and scenario projections of future climate change. ''Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System Model: A Modeling Tool for the Climate Change Research Community'' is the first book to offer systematic evaluations of this model's performance. It is comprehensive in scope, covering both developmental and application-oriented aspects of this climate system model. It also provides an outlook of future development of FGOALS and offers an overview of how to employ the model. It represents a valuable reference work for researchers and professionals working within the related areas of climate variability and change.

Climate change refugia as a tool for climate adaptation

Science.gov (United States)

Climate change refugia, areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change so as to increase persistence of valued physical, ecological, and cultural resources, are considered as potential adaptation options in the face of anthropogenic climate change. In a collaboration ...

2014 Earth System Grid Federation and Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools Conference Report

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Williams, Dean N. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

2015-01-27

The climate and weather data science community met December 9–11, 2014, in Livermore, California, for the fourth annual Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) Face-to-Face (F2F) Conference, hosted by the Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Infrastructure for the European Network of Earth System Modelling, and the Australian Department of Education. Both ESGF and UVCDATremain global collaborations committed to developing a new generation of open-source software infrastructure that provides distributed access and analysis to simulated and observed data from the climate and weather communities. The tools and infrastructure created under these international multi-agency collaborations are critical to understanding extreme weather conditions and long-term climate change. In addition, the F2F conference fosters a stronger climate and weather data science community and facilitates a stronger federated software infrastructure. The 2014 F2F conference detailed the progress of ESGF, UV-CDAT, and other community efforts over the year and sets new priorities and requirements for existing and impending national and international community projects, such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase Six. Specifically discussed at the conference were project capabilities and enhancements needs for data distribution, analysis, visualization, hardware and network infrastructure, standards, and resources.

Flexible global ocean-atmosphere-land system model. A modeling tool for the climate change research community

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Zhou, Tianjun; Yu, Yongqiang; Liu, Yimin; Wang, Bin (eds.) [Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, (China). Inst. of Atmospheric Physics

2014-04-01

First book available on systematic evaluations of the performance of the global climate model FGOALS. Covers the whole field, ranging from the development to the applications of this climate system model. Provide an outlook for the future development of the FGOALS model system. Offers brief introduction about how to run FGOALS. Coupled climate system models are of central importance for climate studies. A new model known as FGOALS (the Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System model), has been developed by the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (LASG/IAP, CAS), a first-tier national geophysical laboratory. It serves as a powerful tool, both for deepening our understanding of fundamental mechanisms of the climate system and for making decadal prediction and scenario projections of future climate change. ''Flexible Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System Model: A Modeling Tool for the Climate Change Research Community'' is the first book to offer systematic evaluations of this model's performance. It is comprehensive in scope, covering both developmental and application-oriented aspects of this climate system model. It also provides an outlook of future development of FGOALS and offers an overview of how to employ the model. It represents a valuable reference work for researchers and professionals working within the related areas of climate variability and change.

How Philadelphia is Integrating Climate Science and Policy: Changing Capital Planning Processes and Developing Flood-Depth Tools

Science.gov (United States)

Bhat, C.; Dix, B.; Choate, A.; Wong, A.; Asam, S.; Schultz, P. A.

2016-12-01

Policy makers can implement more effective climate change adaptation programs if they are provided with two tools: accessible information on the impacts that they need to prepare for, and clear guidance on how to integrate climate change considerations into their work. This presentation will highlight recent and ongoing efforts at the City of Philadelphia to integrate climate science into their decision-making. These efforts include developing a climate change information visualization tool, climate change risk assessments across the city, and processes to integrate climate change into routine planning and budgeting practices. The goal of these efforts is to make climate change science highly targeted to decision maker needs, non-political, easily accessible, and actionable. While sea level rise inundation maps have been available to communities for years, the maps do not effectively communicate how the design of a building or a piece of infrastructure would need to be modified to protect it. The Philadelphia Flood Risk Viewer is an interactive planning tool that allows Philadelphia to identify projected depths of flooding for any location within the City, for a variety of sea level rise and storm surge scenarios. Users can also determine whether a location is located in a FEMA floodplain. By having access to information on the projected depth of flooding at a given location, the City can determine what flood protection measures may be effective, or even inform the long-term viability of developing a particular area. With an understanding of climate vulnerabilities, cities have the opportunity to make smart, climate-resilient investments with their capital budgets that will yield multiple benefits for years to come. Few, however, have established protocols for doing so. Philadelphia, with support from ICF, developed a guidance document that identifies recommendations for integrating climate change considerations throughout the Capital Program and capital budgeting

Development of a multilevel health and safety climate survey tool within a mining setting.

Science.gov (United States)

Parker, Anthony W; Tones, Megan J; Ritchie, Gabrielle E

2017-09-01

This study aimed to design, implement and evaluate the reliability and validity of a multifactorial and multilevel health and safety climate survey (HSCS) tool with utility in the Australian mining setting. An 84-item questionnaire was developed and pilot tested on a sample of 302 Australian miners across two open cut sites. A 67-item, 10 factor solution was obtained via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) representing prioritization and attitudes to health and safety across multiple domains and organizational levels. Each factor demonstrated a high level of internal reliability, and a series of ANOVAs determined a high level of consistency in responses across the workforce, and generally irrespective of age, experience or job category. Participants tended to hold favorable views of occupational health and safety (OH&S) climate at the management, supervisor, workgroup and individual level. The survey tool demonstrated reliability and validity for use within an open cut Australian mining setting and supports a multilevel, industry specific approach to OH&S climate. Findings suggested a need for mining companies to maintain high OH&S standards to minimize risks to employee health and safety. Future research is required to determine the ability of this measure to predict OH&S outcomes and its utility within other mine settings. As this tool integrates health and safety, it may have benefits for assessment, monitoring and evaluation in the industry, and improving the understanding of how health and safety climate interact at multiple levels to influence OH&S outcomes. Copyright © 2017 National Safety Council and Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Talking About Climate: a simple tool for everyday climate conversations

Science.gov (United States)

Twedt, J. R.; White, R. H.; Tigchelaar, M.; Doroschak, K.; Buchanan, R.; Lundquist, D.

2017-12-01

Public opinion research from the Yale Climate Opinion Maps shows that more than half of Americans are worried about climate change, yet over 70% of Americans rarely or never discuss it with friends or family. Sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard has written about climate denial and how the subject of climate change kills conversation in her interviews, even among people who feel concerned. At the same time, news reporting on climate is often dense with information or scientific nuance and fails to make people feel personally invested in this global issue. This is problematic, because a fair and civil response to our climate crisis will require not only the personal commitment of many, but also collaborative public discourse. For these reasons, we have developed an app that aims to foster meaningful conversation about climate change. The app draws on a database we constructed of historic climate events and relates these events to people's own lives and experiences. Our database is broad and growing, and includes climate change facts, landmark cases in environmental law, social achievements such as the IPCC earning the Nobel Peace Prize, and the personal account from a 12-year old's blog post about FEMA relocation after Hurricane Katrina. Events are stated in plain language and accompanied by open-ended questions to spark discussion. The goal of ClimateConversations is not to inform or persuade, but to support reflective, open-ended conversation, to encourage personal storytelling about climate-related events, and to foster generative dialogue on an issue that all too often causes discomfort and social division. Here we present the climate science, social science, software, and design considerations that went into developing this app. We will also present early quantitative and qualitative metrics of it's use and effectiveness both in classroom and community settings.

Tools for enhancing motivation in teaching climate change and impacts for students in forest- and environmental engineering

Science.gov (United States)

Gálos, Borbála

2017-04-01

Climate change is observed to have severe impacts on forest ecosystems. Ongoing research projects are dealing with the complex analysis of the causes of the health status decline and mortality of the vulnerable tree species. In the Carpathian Basin, recurrent long lasting drought periods and heatwaves of the last decades initiated the sequence of abiotic and biotic impacts in the beech and oak forests. Threatening extreme events are very likely to occur more frequent under changing climate conditions until the end of the 21st century. Therefore adaptation strategies and renewed regulations of the tree species selection are necessary. Learning material of forest education needs to be continuously updated with the new aspects and results of recent research and forest management planning. Therefore ideas and tools have been developed for teaching climate change impacts for students in forest- and environmental engineering. Using examples from world sport championships (e.g. losers and winners of climate change) these tools are applied to communicate the basic research questions in an easily understandable way as well as to motivate students and raise their awareness for the complex processes of forest - climate interactions. By the application of the developed examples for motivation, the key competences and learning outcomes can be the following: • students get an insight into the observed and projected tendencies of climate extremes; • they get an impression on the complexity of the climate change related damage chains; • they will be able to identify the climatic drivers of forest decline and mortality; • with the skill of critical thinking they will be able to evaluate the ecological role of forests that are already affected and that could be affected by the consequences of changing climate conditions; • they recognize the importance and urgency of the appropriate decisions in forestry and nature conservation. Keywords: climate change impacts, forest

ARM Climate Research Facility: Outreach Tools and Strategies

Science.gov (United States)

Roeder, L.; Jundt, R.

2009-12-01

Sponsored by the Department of Energy, the ARM Climate Research Facility is a global scientific user facility for the study of climate change. To publicize progress and achievements and to reach new users, the ACRF uses a variety of Web 2.0 tools and strategies that build off of the program’s comprehensive and well established News Center (www.arm.gov/news). These strategies include: an RSS subscription service for specific news categories; an email “newsletter” distribution to the user community that compiles the latest News Center updates into a short summary with links; and a Facebook page that pulls information from the News Center and links to relevant information in other online venues, including those of our collaborators. The ACRF also interacts with users through field campaign blogs, like Discovery Channel’s EarthLive, to share research experiences from the field. Increasingly, field campaign Wikis are established to help ACRF researchers collaborate during the planning and implementation phases of their field studies and include easy to use logs and image libraries to help record the campaigns. This vital reference information is used in developing outreach material that is shared in highlights, news, and Facebook. Other Web 2.0 tools that ACRF uses include Google Maps to help users visualize facility locations and aircraft flight patterns. Easy-to-use comment boxes are also available on many of the data-related web pages on www.arm.gov to encourage feedback. To provide additional opportunities for increased interaction with the public and user community, future Web 2.0 plans under consideration for ACRF include: evaluating field campaigns for Twitter and microblogging opportunities, adding public discussion forums to research highlight web pages, moving existing photos into albums on FlickR or Facebook, and building online video archives through YouTube.

Climate Risk Management and Decision Support Tools for the Agriculture Sector in Lao PDR, Bangladesh, and Indonesia

Science.gov (United States)

Allis, E. C.; Greene, A. M.; Cousin, R.

2014-12-01

We describe a comprehensive project for developing climate information and decision support / climate risk management tools in Lao PDR, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Mechanisms are developed for bringing the benefits of these tools to both policy makers and poor rural farmers, with the goal of enabling better management, at the farm level, of the risks associated with climate variability and change. The project comprises several interwoven threads, differentially applied in the different study regions. These include data management and quality control, development of seasonal forecast capabilities, use of dynamic cropping calendars and climate advisories, the development of longer-term climate information for both past and future and a weather index insurance component. Stakeholder engagement and capacity building served as reinforcing and complementary elements to all components. In this talk we will provide a project overview, show how the various components fit together and describe some lessons learned in this attempt to promote the uptake of actionable climate information from farmer to policy level. The applied research project was led by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University with funding from the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and in close collaboration with our regional partners at the Centre for Climate Risk and Opportunity Management in Southeast Asia Pacific (at Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia), Indonesia's National Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG), Lao PDR's National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI), Laotian Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH), WorldFish Center, Bangladesh Meteorology Department (BMD), and CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Tooling up urban planning for climate change mitigation in Malaysian cities

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chau, L W; Yap, Z C; Ho, C S

2014-01-01

The city's 2-dimensional spatial structure and 3-dimensional form significantly influence its energy and GHG emission intensity. In rapidly developing urban-regions, the ability of the local planning authorities to quantify the spatial structure and form of existing urban areas, new developments and the emergent urban-region in terms of GHG emission is vital to any effective local, national and global climate change mitigation effort. While a wide array of tools has been developed for assessing built environment sustainability at various spatial scales, these are predominantly eco-efficiency rating tools that do not model the 'spatial structure-GHG' relationship and do not illustrate the GHG implications of urban structure and form, which crucially inform local planning decisions with respect to climate change mitigation. This paper takes the first steps in analysing three spatial-based planning models (Envision Tomorrow, GHGProof, URBEMIS) that estimate GHG emissions towards assessing their adaptability for application in Malaysian cities. It looks into the models' i nner working , unpacking the variables and their relationships; assumptions and conversion rates used; and their data requirement and structure. The models' characteristics and features are critically compared to evaluate their capabilities, limitations and relevance to the Malaysian urban planning context, particularly in terms of data availability

Mainstreaming Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient growth pathways into investment decision-making - lessons from development financial institutions on approaches and tools

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cochran, Ian; Eschalier, Claire; Deheza, Mariana

2015-01-01

The integration or 'mainstreaming' of the transition to a low-carbon climate-resilient future as a prism through which to make financial decisions poses a broad number of operational challenges. This background paper for the March 31 event is drawn from the report currently underway by CDC Climat Research supported by the Group Agence Francaise de Developpement and the Group Caisse des depots entitled 'Mainstreaming Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient Growth Pathways into International Finance Institutions' Activities: Identifying standards and tools and a typology for integration into operational decision-making'. Drawing from existing studies of current practice among mainly public development finance institutions (DFIs), this paper presents three families of tools and metrics used by DFIs to integrate climate change into investment decision-making. It presents a number of examples of how institutions have mainstreamed these issues into upstream strategic and downstream assessment processes. This paper also identifies the further challenge of moving from a system of tools and indicators that focus principally on climate finance tracking - important to foster trust and progress on international cooperation - to a means of aligning activities across financial institutions and the entire economy with the transition to a low-carbon climate-resilient economic model necessary to achieve the 2 deg. C commitment. (authors)

Mainstreaming Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient growth pathways into Development Finance Institutions' activities. A research program on the standards, tools and metrics to support transition to the low-carbon climate-resilient development models. Paper 2 - Lessons from the use of climate-related decision-making standards and tools by DFIs to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient future

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cochran, Ian; Eschalier, Claire; Deheza, Mariana

2015-10-01

The integration or 'mainstreaming' of climate change into development finance decisions poses a broad number of operational challenges. Drawing from the current practice of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs), this paper first identifies three families of tools and metrics used by DFIs to integrate both mitigation and adaptation objectives into investment decision making. Based on this analysis, it then establishes a framework for integrating carbon standards and tools into the upstream strategic and downstream assessment stages of investment decision making. It principally considers the integration into the assessment of direct project finance and investment, but also looks at budget support, programmatic and indirect interventions. Finally, the paper identifies the next steps to build on existing tools and indicators that currently focus on climate finance tracking to those that foster the alignment of long-term development with the 2 deg. C climate objective. This alignment implies moving from 'static' assessment tools - that identify whether or not emissions are reduced or resiliency is increased by an action - to a 'dynamic' process within which the 'transition impact' is assessed. (authors)

Integrating research tools to support the management of social-ecological systems under climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Miller, Brian W.; Morisette, Jeffrey T.

2014-01-01

Developing resource management strategies in the face of climate change is complicated by the considerable uncertainty associated with projections of climate and its impacts and by the complex interactions between social and ecological variables. The broad, interconnected nature of this challenge has resulted in calls for analytical frameworks that integrate research tools and can support natural resource management decision making in the face of uncertainty and complex interactions. We respond to this call by first reviewing three methods that have proven useful for climate change research, but whose application and development have been largely isolated: species distribution modeling, scenario planning, and simulation modeling. Species distribution models provide data-driven estimates of the future distributions of species of interest, but they face several limitations and their output alone is not sufficient to guide complex decisions for how best to manage resources given social and economic considerations along with dynamic and uncertain future conditions. Researchers and managers are increasingly exploring potential futures of social-ecological systems through scenario planning, but this process often lacks quantitative response modeling and validation procedures. Simulation models are well placed to provide added rigor to scenario planning because of their ability to reproduce complex system dynamics, but the scenarios and management options explored in simulations are often not developed by stakeholders, and there is not a clear consensus on how to include climate model outputs. We see these strengths and weaknesses as complementarities and offer an analytical framework for integrating these three tools. We then describe the ways in which this framework can help shift climate change research from useful to usable.

Evaluation of a survey tool to measure safety climate in Australian hospital pharmacy staff.

Science.gov (United States)

Walpola, Ramesh L; Chen, Timothy F; Fois, Romano A; Ashcroft, Darren M; Lalor, Daniel J

Safety climate evaluation is increasingly used by hospitals as part of quality improvement initiatives. Consequently, it is necessary to have validated tools to measure changes. To evaluate the construct validity and internal consistency of a survey tool to measure Australian hospital pharmacy patient safety climate. A 42 item cross-sectional survey was used to evaluate the patient safety climate of 607 Australian hospital pharmacy staff. Survey responses were initially mapped to the factor structure previously identified in European community pharmacy. However, as the data did not adequately fit the community pharmacy model, participants were randomly split into two groups with exploratory factor analysis performed on the first group (n = 302) and confirmatory factor analyses performed on the second group (n = 305). Following exploratory factor analysis (59.3% variance explained) and confirmatory factor analysis, a 6-factor model containing 28 items was obtained with satisfactory model fit (χ 2 (335) = 664.61 p  0.643) and model nesting between the groups (Δχ 2 (22) = 30.87, p = 0.10). Three factors (blame culture, organisational learning and working conditions) were similar to those identified in European community pharmacy and labelled identically. Three additional factors (preoccupation with improvement; comfort to question authority; and safety issues being swept under the carpet) highlight hierarchical issues present in hospital settings. This study has demonstrated the validity of a survey to evaluate patient safety climate of Australian hospital pharmacy staff. Importantly, this validated factor structure may be used to evaluate changes in safety climate over time. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

BASINs 4.0 Climate Assessment Tool (CAT): Supporting Documentation and User's Manual (Final Report)

Science.gov (United States)

EPA announced the availability of the report, BASINS 4.0 Climate Assessment Tool (CAT): Supporting Documentation and User's Manual. This report was prepared by the EPA's Global Change Research Program (GCRP), an assessment-oriented program, that sits within the Office of R...

Introducing Enabling Computational Tools to the Climate Sciences: Multi-Resolution Climate Modeling with Adaptive Cubed-Sphere Grids

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jablonowski, Christiane [Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)

2015-07-14

The research investigates and advances strategies how to bridge the scale discrepancies between local, regional and global phenomena in climate models without the prohibitive computational costs of global cloud-resolving simulations. In particular, the research explores new frontiers in computational geoscience by introducing high-order Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) techniques into climate research. AMR and statically-adapted variable-resolution approaches represent an emerging trend for atmospheric models and are likely to become the new norm in future-generation weather and climate models. The research advances the understanding of multi-scale interactions in the climate system and showcases a pathway how to model these interactions effectively with advanced computational tools, like the Chombo AMR library developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The research is interdisciplinary and combines applied mathematics, scientific computing and the atmospheric sciences. In this research project, a hierarchy of high-order atmospheric models on cubed-sphere computational grids have been developed that serve as an algorithmic prototype for the finite-volume solution-adaptive Chombo-AMR approach. The foci of the investigations have lied on the characteristics of both static mesh adaptations and dynamically-adaptive grids that can capture flow fields of interest like tropical cyclones. Six research themes have been chosen. These are (1) the introduction of adaptive mesh refinement techniques into the climate sciences, (2) advanced algorithms for nonhydrostatic atmospheric dynamical cores, (3) an assessment of the interplay between resolved-scale dynamical motions and subgrid-scale physical parameterizations, (4) evaluation techniques for atmospheric model hierarchies, (5) the comparison of AMR refinement strategies and (6) tropical cyclone studies with a focus on multi-scale interactions and variable-resolution modeling. The results of this research project

Use of the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index as an Assessment Tool for Reptiles and Amphibians: Lessons Learned

Science.gov (United States)

Tuberville, Tracey D.; Andrews, Kimberly M.; Sperry, Jinelle H.; Grosse, Andrew M.

2015-10-01

Climate change threatens biodiversity globally, yet it can be challenging to predict which species may be most vulnerable. Given the scope of the problem, it is imperative to rapidly assess vulnerability and identify actions to decrease risk. Although a variety of tools have been developed to assess climate change vulnerability, few have been evaluated with regard to their suitability for certain taxonomic groups. Due to their ectothermic physiology, low vagility, and strong association with temporary wetlands, reptiles and amphibians may be particularly vulnerable relative to other groups. Here, we evaluate use of the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) to assess a large suite of herpetofauna from the Sand Hills Ecoregion of the southeastern United States. Although data were frequently lacking for certain variables (e.g., phenological response to climate change, genetic variation), sufficient data were available to evaluate all 117 species. Sensitivity analyses indicated that results were highly dependent on size of assessment area and climate scenario selection. In addition, several ecological traits common in, but relatively unique to, herpetofauna are likely to contribute to their vulnerability and need special consideration during the scoring process. Despite some limitations, the NatureServe CCVI was a useful tool for screening large numbers of reptile and amphibian species. We provide general recommendations as to how the CCVI tool's application to herpetofauna can be improved through more specific guidance to the user regarding how to incorporate unique physiological and behavioral traits into scoring existing sensitivity factors and through modification to the assessment tool itself.

Methodological framework, analytical tool and database for the assessment of climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability in Denmark

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Skougaard Kaspersen, P.; Halsnaes, K.; Gregg, J.; Drews, M.

2012-12-15

In this report we provide recommendations about how more consistent studies and data can be provided based on available modelling tools and data for integrated assessment of climate change risks and adaptation options. It is concluded that integrated assessments within this area requires the use of a wide range of data and models in order to cover the full chain of elements including climate modelling, impact, risks, costs, social issues, and decision making. As an outcome of this activity a comprehensive data and modelling tool named Danish Integrated Assessment System (DIAS) has been developed, this may be used by researchers within the field. DIAS has been implemented and tested in a case study on urban flooding caused by extreme precipitation in Aarhus, and this study highlights the usefulness of integrating data, models, and methods from several disciplines into a common framework. DIAS is an attempt to describe such a framework with regards to integrated analysis of climate impacts and adaptation. The final product of the DTU KFT project ''Tool for Vulnerability analysis'' is NOT a user friendly Climate Adaptation tool ready for various types of analysis that may directly be used by decision makers and consultant on their own. Rather developed methodology and collected/available data can serve as a starting point for case specific analyses. For this reason alone this work should very much be viewed as an attempt to coordinate research, data and models outputs between different research institutes from various disciplines. It is unquestionable that there is a future need to integrate information for areas not yet included, and it is very likely that such efforts will depend on research projects conducted in different climate change adaptation areas and sectors in Denmark. (Author)

Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Williams, Dean N. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Silva, Claudio [New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Computer Science and Engineering Dept.

2013-09-30

For the past three years, a large analysis and visualization effort—funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—has brought together a wide variety of industry-standard scientific computing libraries and applications to create Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) to serve the global climate simulation and observational research communities. To support interactive analysis and visualization, all components connect through a provenance application–programming interface to capture meaningful history and workflow. Components can be loosely coupled into the framework for fast integration or tightly coupled for greater system functionality and communication with other components. The overarching goal of UV-CDAT is to provide a new paradigm for access to and analysis of massive, distributed scientific data collections by leveraging distributed data architectures located throughout the world. The UV-CDAT framework addresses challenges in analysis and visualization and incorporates new opportunities, including parallelism for better efficiency, higher speed, and more accurate scientific inferences. Today, it provides more than 600 users access to more analysis and visualization products than any other single source.

A new tool for exploring climate change induced range shifts of conifer species in China.

Science.gov (United States)

Kou, Xiaojun; Li, Qin; Beierkuhnlein, Carl; Zhao, Yiheng; Liu, Shirong

2014-01-01

It is inevitable that tree species will undergo considerable range shifts in response to anthropogenic induced climate change, even in the near future. Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are valuable tools in exploring general temporal trends and spatial patterns of potential range shifts. Understanding projections to future climate for tree species will facilitate policy making in forestry. Comparative studies for a large number of tree species require the availability of suitable and standardized indices. A crucial limitation when deriving such indices is the threshold problem in defining ranges, which has made interspecies comparison problematic until now. Here we propose a set of threshold-free indices, which measure range explosion (I), overlapping (O), and range center movement in three dimensions (Dx, Dy, Dz), based on fuzzy set theory (Fuzzy Set based Potential Range Shift Index, F-PRS Index). A graphical tool (PRS_Chart) was developed to visualize these indices. This technique was then applied to 46 Pinaceae species that are widely distributed and partly common in China. The spatial patterns of the modeling results were then statistically tested for significance. Results showed that range overlap was generally low; no trends in range size changes and longitudinal movements could be found, but northward and poleward movement trends were highly significant. Although range shifts seemed to exhibit huge interspecies variation, they were very consistent for certain climate change scenarios. Comparing the IPCC scenarios, we found that scenario A1B would lead to a larger extent of range shifts (less overlapping and more latitudinal movement) than the A2 and the B1 scenarios. It is expected that the newly developed standardized indices and the respective graphical tool will facilitate studies on PRS's for other tree species groups that are important in forestry as well, and thus support climate adaptive forest management.

A new tool for exploring climate change induced range shifts of conifer species in China.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xiaojun Kou

Full Text Available It is inevitable that tree species will undergo considerable range shifts in response to anthropogenic induced climate change, even in the near future. Species Distribution Models (SDMs are valuable tools in exploring general temporal trends and spatial patterns of potential range shifts. Understanding projections to future climate for tree species will facilitate policy making in forestry. Comparative studies for a large number of tree species require the availability of suitable and standardized indices. A crucial limitation when deriving such indices is the threshold problem in defining ranges, which has made interspecies comparison problematic until now. Here we propose a set of threshold-free indices, which measure range explosion (I, overlapping (O, and range center movement in three dimensions (Dx, Dy, Dz, based on fuzzy set theory (Fuzzy Set based Potential Range Shift Index, F-PRS Index. A graphical tool (PRS_Chart was developed to visualize these indices. This technique was then applied to 46 Pinaceae species that are widely distributed and partly common in China. The spatial patterns of the modeling results were then statistically tested for significance. Results showed that range overlap was generally low; no trends in range size changes and longitudinal movements could be found, but northward and poleward movement trends were highly significant. Although range shifts seemed to exhibit huge interspecies variation, they were very consistent for certain climate change scenarios. Comparing the IPCC scenarios, we found that scenario A1B would lead to a larger extent of range shifts (less overlapping and more latitudinal movement than the A2 and the B1 scenarios. It is expected that the newly developed standardized indices and the respective graphical tool will facilitate studies on PRS's for other tree species groups that are important in forestry as well, and thus support climate adaptive forest management.

The DSET Tool Library: A software approach to enable data exchange between climate system models

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

McCormick, J. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)

1994-12-01

Climate modeling is a computationally intensive process. Until recently computers were not powerful enough to perform the complex calculations required to simulate the earth`s climate. As a result standalone programs were created that represent components of the earth`s climate (e.g., Atmospheric Circulation Model). However, recent advances in computing, including massively parallel computing, make it possible to couple the components forming a complete earth climate simulation. The ability to couple different climate model components will significantly improve our ability to predict climate accurately and reliably. Historically each major component of the coupled earth simulation is a standalone program designed independently with different coordinate systems and data representations. In order for two component models to be coupled, the data of one model must be mapped to the coordinate system of the second model. The focus of this project is to provide a general tool to facilitate the mapping of data between simulation components, with an emphasis on using object-oriented programming techniques to provide polynomial interpolation, line and area weighting, and aggregation services.

Proceedings of the Atlantic climate change 2008 conference : risk, responses and tools for action

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2008-01-01

This conference provided a forum for members of the private and public sector, as well as researchers and industry leaders to discuss methods of preventing and adapting to climate change in the Maritime provinces. Presentations at the conference evaluated a range of options, opportunities, and potential outcomes from strategies for reducing environmental impacts and improving energy efficiency in the region. Topics discussed at the conference included adaptation tools; carbon markets; resource management; corporate and public policy; and risk assessment and decision-making processes. The conference was divided into the following 5 sessions: (1) land use planning and adaptation, (2) fish, farms and forests, (3) climate science and modelling, (4) energy policy for mitigation and sustainability, and (5) tools for adaptation and infrastructure. A workshop discussing the use of LIDAR in decision-making processes was also held. The conference featured 11 presentations, of which 3 have been catalogued separately for inclusion in this database. tabs., figs.

Quantitative and creative design tools for urban design in cold and windy climates

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Koss, Holger; Jensen, Lotte Bjerregaard; Nielsen, Thomas Alexander Sick

2014-01-01

between the design processes and the academic knowledge available is a focus area. The effects of climate change and a general higher demand for quantitative assessment of urban planning proposals in hard climatic locations have created a demand for research based design advice. The paper will present......In cold and windy climates, the quality of the urban spaces is severely challenged. A design process with a very high level of information regarding wind, sun, daylight and water from the earliest of the design process will help create the most optimized design. For the last couple of years...... in academic ‘silos’ where little attention has been made in regards to architectural design processes. Simulation tools were developed that can render a larger amount of information available in a short time and thus can keep pace with an ongoing design process in an architectural studio. Bridging the gap...

The land management tool: Developing a climate service in Southwest UK

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pete Falloon

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Seasonal climate forecasts (SCFs have significant potential to support shorter-term agricultural decisions and longer-term climate adaptation plans, but uptake in Europe has to date been low. Under the European Union funded project, European Provision Of Regional Impacts Assessments on Seasonal and Decadal Timescales (EUPORIAS we have developed the Land Management Tool (LMTool, a prototype seasonal climate service for land managers, working closely in collaboration with two stakeholder organizations, Clinton Devon Estates (CDE and the National Farmers Union (NFU. LMTool was one of several prototype climate services selected for development within EUPORIAS, including those for the UK transport network, food security in Ethiopia, renewable energy production, hydroelectric energy production in Sweden, and river management in two French basins. The LMTool provides SCFs (1–3 months ahead to farmers in the Southwest UK, alongside 14-day site specific weather forecasts during the winter months when the skill of seasonal forecasts is greatest.We describe the processes through which the LMTool was co-designed and developed with the farmers, its technical development and key features; critically examine the lessons learned and their implications for providing future climate services for land managers; and finally assess the feasibility of delivering an operational winter seasonal climate service for UK land managers.A number of key learning points from developing the prototype may benefit future work in climate services for the land management and agriculture sector; many of these points are also valid for climate services in other sectors. Prototype development strongly benefitted from; working with intermediaries to identify representative, engaged land managers; an iterative and flexible process of co-design with the farmer group; and from an interdisciplinary project team. Further work is needed to develop a better understanding of the role of

To widen the action tools against the climatic change by domestic projects. Evaluation report

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Arnaud, E.; Dominicis, A. de; Leguet, B.; Leseur, A.; Perthuis, Ch. de

2005-11-01

In the framework of the climatic change fight, each country aims to implement tools of emissions reduction. In France, the european system of CO 2 quotas exchange, applied on the more emitted installations, covers less than 30% of the national carbon emissions. The other 70% are free of taxes. The 'climate mission' realized an evaluation of the emission reduction in the case of a new policy aiming to develop domestic projects of emission control. This report presents the study and its conclusions: the domestic projects, the possibilities of these projects in the transportation agriculture and forests and building sectors, the implementing conditions

A New Tool for Climatic Analysis Using the Koppen Climate Classification

Science.gov (United States)

Larson, Paul R.; Lohrengel, C. Frederick, II

2011-01-01

The purpose of climate classification is to help make order of the seemingly endless spatial distribution of climates. The Koppen classification system in a modified format is the most widely applied system in use today. This system may not be the best nor most complete climate classification that can be conceived, but it has gained widespread…

WozARd: A Wizard of Oz Method for Wearable Augmented Reality Interaction—A Pilot Study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Günter Alce

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Head-mounted displays and other wearable devices open up for innovative types of interaction for wearable augmented reality (AR. However, to design and evaluate these new types of AR user interfaces, it is essential to quickly simulate undeveloped components of the system and collect feedback from potential users early in the design process. One way of doing this is the wizard of Oz (WOZ method. The basic idea behind WOZ is to create the illusion of a working system by having a human operator, performing some or all of the system’s functions. WozARd is a WOZ method developed for wearable AR interaction. The presented pilot study was an initial investigation of the capability of the WozARd method to simulate an AR city tour. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 21 participants performing a simulated AR city tour. The data analysis focused on seven categories that can have an impact on how the WozARd method is perceived by participants: precision, relevance, responsiveness, technical stability, visual fidelity, general user-experience, and human-operator performance. Overall, the results indicate that the participants perceived the simulated AR city tour as a relatively realistic experience despite a certain degree of technical instability and human-operator mistakes.

Validation of Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Organizational Climate Questionnaire: A New Tool to Study Nurse Practitioner Practice Settings.

Science.gov (United States)

Poghosyan, Lusine; Chaplin, William F; Shaffer, Jonathan A

2017-04-01

Favorable organizational climate in primary care settings is necessary to expand the nurse practitioner (NP) workforce and promote their practice. Only one NP-specific tool, the Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Organizational Climate Questionnaire (NP-PCOCQ), measures NP organizational climate. We confirmed NP-PCOCQ's factor structure and established its predictive validity. A crosssectional survey design was used to collect data from 314 NPs in Massachusetts in 2012. Confirmatory factor analysis and regression models were used. The 4-factor model characterized NP-PCOCQ. The NP-PCOCQ score predicted job satisfaction (beta = .36; p organizational climate in their clinics. Further testing of NP-PCOCQ is needed.

The NOAA Local Climate Analysis Tool - An Application in Support of a Weather Ready Nation

Science.gov (United States)

Timofeyeva, M. M.; Horsfall, F. M.

2012-12-01

Citizens across the U.S., including decision makers from the local to the national level, have a multitude of questions about climate, such as the current state and how that state fits into the historical context, and more importantly, how climate will impact them, especially with regard to linkages to extreme weather events. Developing answers to these types of questions for locations has typically required extensive work to gather data, conduct analyses, and generate relevant explanations and graphics. Too frequently providers don't have ready access to or knowledge of reliable, trusted data sets, nor sound, scientifically accepted analysis techniques such that they can provide a rapid response to queries they receive. In order to support National Weather Service (NWS) local office forecasters with information they need to deliver timely responses to climate-related questions from their customers, we have developed the Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT). LCAT uses the principles of artificial intelligence to respond to queries, in particular, through use of machine technology that responds intelligently to input from users. A user translates customer questions into primary variables and issues and LCAT pulls the most relevant data and analysis techniques to provide information back to the user, who in turn responds to their customer. Most responses take on the order of 10 seconds, which includes providing statistics, graphical displays of information, translations for users, metadata, and a summary of the user request to LCAT. Applications in Phase I of LCAT, which is targeted for the NWS field offices, include Climate Change Impacts, Climate Variability Impacts, Drought Analysis and Impacts, Water Resources Applications, Attribution of Extreme Events, and analysis techniques such as time series analysis, trend analysis, compositing, and correlation and regression techniques. Data accessed by LCAT are homogenized historical COOP and Climate Prediction Center

A Hybrid Evaluation System Framework (Shell & Web) with Standardized Access to Climate Model Data and Verification Tools for a Clear Climate Science Infrastructure on Big Data High Performance Computers

Science.gov (United States)

Kadow, Christopher; Illing, Sebastian; Kunst, Oliver; Ulbrich, Uwe; Cubasch, Ulrich

2015-04-01

The project 'Integrated Data and Evaluation System for Decadal Scale Prediction' (INTEGRATION) as part of the German decadal prediction project MiKlip develops a central evaluation system. The fully operational hybrid features a HPC shell access and an user friendly web-interface. It employs one common system with a variety of verification tools and validation data from different projects in- and outside of MiKlip. The evaluation system is located at the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) and has direct access to the bulk of its ESGF node including millions of climate model data sets, e.g. from CMIP5 and CORDEX. The database is organized by the international CMOR standard using the meta information of the self-describing model, reanalysis and observational data sets. Apache Solr is used for indexing the different data projects into one common search environment. This implemented meta data system with its advanced but easy to handle search tool supports users, developers and their tools to retrieve the required information. A generic application programming interface (API) allows scientific developers to connect their analysis tools with the evaluation system independently of the programming language used. Users of the evaluation techniques benefit from the common interface of the evaluation system without any need to understand the different scripting languages. Facilitating the provision and usage of tools and climate data increases automatically the number of scientists working with the data sets and identify discrepancies. Additionally, the history and configuration sub-system stores every analysis performed with the evaluation system in a MySQL database. Configurations and results of the tools can be shared among scientists via shell or web-system. Therefore, plugged-in tools gain automatically from transparency and reproducibility. Furthermore, when configurations match while starting a evaluation tool, the system suggests to use results already produced

Booklet for sub-national stakeholders heading towards the COP 21. Agricultural and forestry focus. Key concepts on the impacts of climate change, climate policies and economic tools: insight from French territories

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Depoues, Vivian; Leseur, Alexia; Bordier, Cecile; Foucherot, Claudine; Lacan, Lea; Planton, Serge; Blanchard, Michele; Lemonsu, Aude; Martin, Eric; Masson, Valery; Soubeyroux, Jean-Michel; Ouzeau, Gaelle; Dandin, Philippe; Pigeon, Gregoire; Duvernoy, Jerome; Mondon, Sylvain; Bodiguel, Aude; Gouthiere, Laurence; Martin-Phipps, Cecile; Archambault, Sabrina; Joubert, Marion; Madariaga, Nicole; Coste, Marie-Alexandra; Viguie, Vincent; Avner, Paolo; Cassen, Christophe; Guivarch, Celine; Salagnac, Jean-Luc; Carrega, Marie; Menager, Yann

2015-11-01

This report, released in the year of the Paris Climate 2015 summit (COP21), reviews concepts vital for understanding and acting to address climate change at a regional level. Based on the experience of French territories it presents 37 fact-sheets aimed at local players, providing concise and informative access to the most up-to-date knowledge. It also offers feedback on the impacts of climate change, climate policies at a global, European and French level, and economic tools supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation

Climate Informatics: Accelerating Discovering in Climate Science with Machine Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Monteleoni, Claire; Schmidt, Gavin A.; McQuade, Scott

2014-01-01

The goal of climate informatics, an emerging discipline, is to inspire collaboration between climate scientists and data scientists, in order to develop tools to analyze complex and ever-growing amounts of observed and simulated climate data, and thereby bridge the gap between data and understanding. Here, recent climate informatics work is presented, along with details of some of the field's remaining challenges. Given the impact of climate change, understanding the climate system is an international priority. The goal of climate informatics is to inspire collaboration between climate scientists and data scientists, in order to develop tools to analyze complex and ever-growing amounts of observed and simulated climate data, and thereby bridge the gap between data and understanding. Here, recent climate informatics work is presented, along with details of some of the remaining challenges.

A simulation tool for integrating climate change and Canadian surface transport : towards assessing impacts and adaptations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kanaroglou, P.; Maoh, H.; Woudsma, C.; Marshall, S.

2008-01-01

Extreme weather events resulting from climate change will have a significant impact of the performance of the Canadian transportation system. This presentation described a simulation tool designed to investigate the potential ramifications of future climate change on transportation and the economy. The CLIMATE-C tool was designed to simulate future weather scenarios for the years 2020 and 2050 using weather parameters obtained from a global general circulation model. The model accounted for linkages between weather, transportation, and economic systems. A random utility-based multi-regional input-output model was used to predict inter-regional trade flows by truck and rail in Canada. Simulated weather scenarios were used to describe predicted changes in demographic, social, economic, technological and environmental developments to 2100. Various changes in population and economic growth were considered. Six additional scenarios were formulated to consider moderate and high rainfall events, moderate, high and extreme snowfall, and cold temperatures. Results of the preliminary analysis indicated that the model is sensitive to changes in weather events. Future research is needed to evaluate future weather scenarios and analyze weather-transport data in order to quantify travel speed reduction parameters. tabs., figs.

Multi-criteria decision analysis tools for prioritising emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases associated with climate change in Canada.

Science.gov (United States)

Cox, Ruth; Sanchez, Javier; Revie, Crawford W

2013-01-01

Global climate change is known to result in the emergence or re-emergence of some infectious diseases. Reliable methods to identify the infectious diseases of humans and animals and that are most likely to be influenced by climate are therefore required. Since different priorities will affect the decision to address a particular pathogen threat, decision makers need a standardised method of prioritisation. Ranking methods and Multi-Criteria Decision approaches provide such a standardised method and were employed here to design two different pathogen prioritisation tools. The opinion of 64 experts was elicited to assess the importance of 40 criteria that could be used to prioritise emerging infectious diseases of humans and animals in Canada. A weight was calculated for each criterion according to the expert opinion. Attributes were defined for each criterion as a transparent and repeatable method of measurement. Two different Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis tools were tested, both of which used an additive aggregation approach. These were an Excel spreadsheet tool and a tool developed in software 'M-MACBETH'. The tools were trialed on nine 'test' pathogens. Two different methods of criteria weighting were compared, one using fixed weighting values, the other using probability distributions to account for uncertainty and variation in expert opinion. The ranking of the nine pathogens varied according to the weighting method that was used. In both tools, using both weighting methods, the diseases that tended to rank the highest were West Nile virus, Giardiasis and Chagas, while Coccidioidomycosis tended to rank the lowest. Both tools are a simple and user friendly approach to prioritising pathogens according to climate change by including explicit scoring of 40 criteria and incorporating weighting methods based on expert opinion. They provide a dynamic interactive method that can help to identify pathogens for which a full risk assessment should be pursued.

Multi-criteria decision analysis tools for prioritising emerging or re-emerging infectious diseases associated with climate change in Canada.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ruth Cox

Full Text Available Global climate change is known to result in the emergence or re-emergence of some infectious diseases. Reliable methods to identify the infectious diseases of humans and animals and that are most likely to be influenced by climate are therefore required. Since different priorities will affect the decision to address a particular pathogen threat, decision makers need a standardised method of prioritisation. Ranking methods and Multi-Criteria Decision approaches provide such a standardised method and were employed here to design two different pathogen prioritisation tools. The opinion of 64 experts was elicited to assess the importance of 40 criteria that could be used to prioritise emerging infectious diseases of humans and animals in Canada. A weight was calculated for each criterion according to the expert opinion. Attributes were defined for each criterion as a transparent and repeatable method of measurement. Two different Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis tools were tested, both of which used an additive aggregation approach. These were an Excel spreadsheet tool and a tool developed in software 'M-MACBETH'. The tools were trialed on nine 'test' pathogens. Two different methods of criteria weighting were compared, one using fixed weighting values, the other using probability distributions to account for uncertainty and variation in expert opinion. The ranking of the nine pathogens varied according to the weighting method that was used. In both tools, using both weighting methods, the diseases that tended to rank the highest were West Nile virus, Giardiasis and Chagas, while Coccidioidomycosis tended to rank the lowest. Both tools are a simple and user friendly approach to prioritising pathogens according to climate change by including explicit scoring of 40 criteria and incorporating weighting methods based on expert opinion. They provide a dynamic interactive method that can help to identify pathogens for which a full risk assessment should

A survey on the perceived need and value of decision-support tools for joint mitigation of air pollution and climate change in cities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Erika von Schneidemesser

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Decision-support tools are increasingly popular for informing policy decisions linked to environmental issues. For example, a number of decision-support tools on transport planning provide information on expected effects of different measures (actions, policies, or interventions on air quality, often combined with information on noise pollution or mitigation costs. These tools range in complexity and scale of applicability, from city to international, and include one or several polluting sectors. However, evaluation of the need and utility of tools to support decisions on such linked issues is often lacking, especially for tools intended to support local authorities at the city scale. Here we assessed the need for and value of combining air pollution and climate change mitigation measures into one decision-support tool and the existing policy context in which such a tool might be used. We developed a prototype decision-support tool for evaluating measures for coordinated management of air quality and climate change; and administered a survey in which respondents used the prototype to answer questions about demand for such tools and requirements to make them useful. Additionally, the survey asked questions about participants’ awareness of linkages between air pollution and climate change that are crucial for considering synergies and trade-offs among mitigation measures. Participants showed a high understanding of the linkages between air pollution and climate change, especially recognizing that emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants come from the same source. Survey participants were: European, predominantly German; employed across a range of governmental, non-governmental and research organizations; and responsible for a diversity of issues, primarily involving climate change, air pollution or environment. Survey results showed a lack of awareness of decision-support tools and little implementation or regular use. However

EzMol: A Web Server Wizard for the Rapid Visualization and Image Production of Protein and Nucleic Acid Structures.

Science.gov (United States)

Reynolds, Christopher R; Islam, Suhail A; Sternberg, Michael J E

2018-01-31

EzMol is a molecular visualization Web server in the form of a software wizard, located at http://www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk/ezmol/. It is designed for easy and rapid image manipulation and display of protein molecules, and is intended for users who need to quickly produce high-resolution images of protein molecules but do not have the time or inclination to use a software molecular visualization system. EzMol allows the upload of molecular structure files in PDB format to generate a Web page including a representation of the structure that the user can manipulate. EzMol provides intuitive options for chain display, adjusting the color/transparency of residues, side chains and protein surfaces, and for adding labels to residues. The final adjusted protein image can then be downloaded as a high-resolution image. There are a range of applications for rapid protein display, including the illustration of specific areas of a protein structure and the rapid prototyping of images. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Etude Climat no. 38 'The economic tools of Chinese climate and energy policy at the time of the at the time of the 12. five-year plan'

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhou, Di; Delbosc, Anais

2013-01-01

Among the publications of CDC Climat Research, 'Climate Reports' offer in-depth analyses on a given subject. This issue addresses the following points: The largest developing country and the main source of GHG emissions in the world, China has undertaken in its 12. five-year plan (2011-2015) to strengthen the strategy initiated in the 11. five-year plan. It proposes making the Chinese economy more flexible - hence its change of name to five-year 'guide'-, particularly through increased use of market instruments. This change applies across all fields, including energy and climate policies. Economic instruments are especially expected to help achieve the 2020 strategic energy and climate objectives which China committed to at the Copenhagen Conference in 2009. The five-year plan forms a programmatic document requiring translation into law to develop details of the measures required to achieve the objectives set out. Following the publication of the 12. five-year plan, the Chinese central government therefore introduced a series of regulations to promote energy conservation and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including at a regional and sectoral level. Local governments are particularly expected to participate, by incorporating progress in achieving their climate and energy policy objectives into the system of administrative appraisal. In relation to energy policy, the economic tools put in place exist side by side with pre-existing administrative tools and remain subject to very strong administrative control. They concern the adjustment of both the production pattern - reinforcement of exchanges of production rights and renewable energy production quotas - and the structure of energy consumption - market for energy savings certificates coordinated at a regional level. In terms of climate policy, the Chinese government is testing a range of instruments, including market and taxation mechanisms. The 12. five-year plan notably includes the development of a

The regional climate model as a tool for long-term planning of Quebec water resources

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Frigon, A.

2008-01-01

'Full text': In recent years, important progress has been made in downscaling GCM (Global Climate Model) projections to a resolution where hydrological studies become feasible. Climate change simulations performed with RCMs (Regional Climate Models) have reached a level of confidence that allows us to take advantage of this information in long-term planning of water resources. The RCMs' main advantage consist in their construction based on balanced land as well as atmosphere water and energy budgets, and on their inclusion of feedbacks between the surface and the atmosphere. Such models therefore generate sequences of weather events, providing long time series of hydro-climatic variables that are internally consistent, allowing the analysis of hydrologic regimes. At OURANOS, special attention is placed on the hydrological cycle, given its key role on socioeconomic activities. The Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM) was developed as a potential tool to provide climate projections at the watershed scale. Various analyses performed over small basins in Quebec provide information on the level of confidence we have in the CRCM for use in hydrological studies. Even though this approach is not free of uncertainty, it was found useful by some water resource managers and hence this information should be considered. One of the keys to retain usefulness, despite the associated uncertainties, is to make use of more than a single regional climate projection. This approach will allow for the evaluation of the climate change signal and its associated level of confidence. Such a methodology is already applied by Hydro-Quebec in the long-term planning of its water resources for hydroelectric generation over the Quebec territory. (author)

Forecasting weed distributions using climate data: a GIS early warning tool

Science.gov (United States)

Jarnevich, Catherine S.; Holcombe, Tracy R.; Barnett, David T.; Stohlgren, Thomas J.; Kartesz, John T.

2010-01-01

The number of invasive exotic plant species establishing in the United States is continuing to rise. When prevention of exotic species from entering into a country fails at the national level and the species establishes, reproduces, spreads, and becomes invasive, the most successful action at a local level is early detection followed eradication. We have developed a simple geographic information system (GIS) analysis for developing watch lists for early detection of invasive exotic plants that relies upon currently available species distribution data coupled with environmental data to aid in describing coarse-scale potential distributions. This GIS analysis tool develops environmental envelopes for species based upon the known distribution of a species thought to be invasive and represents the first approximation of its potential habitat while the necessary data are collected to perform more in­-depth analyses. To validate this method we looked at a time series of species distributions for 66 species in Pacific Northwest, and northern Rocky Mountain counties. The time series analysis presented here did select counties that the invasive exotic weeds invaded in subsequent years, showing that this technique could be useful in developing watch lists for the spread of particular exotic species. We applied this same habitat-matching model based upon bioclimaric envelopes to 100 invasive exotics with various levels of known distributions within continental U.S. counties. For species with climatically limited distributions, county watch lists describe county-specific vulnerability to invasion. Species with matching habitats in a county would be added to that county's list. These watch lists can influence management decisions for early warning, control prioritization, and targeted research to determine specific locations within vulnerable counties. This tool provides useful information for rapid assessment of the potential distribution based upon climate envelopes of

Climate-Agriculture-Modeling and Decision Tool for Disease (CAMDT-Disease) for seasonal climate forecast-based crop disease risk management in agriculture

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, K. H.; Lee, S.; Han, E.; Ines, A. V. M.

2017-12-01

Climate-Agriculture-Modeling and Decision Tool (CAMDT) is a decision support system (DSS) tool that aims to facilitate translations of probabilistic seasonal climate forecasts (SCF) to crop responses such as yield and water stress. Since CAMDT is a software framework connecting different models and algorithms with SCF information, it can be easily customized for different types of agriculture models. In this study, we replaced the DSSAT-CSM-Rice model originally incorporated in CAMDT with a generic epidemiological model, EPIRICE, to generate a seasonal pest outlook. The resulting CAMDT-Disease generates potential risks for selected fungal, viral, and bacterial diseases of rice over the next months by translating SCFs into agriculturally-relevant risk information. The integrated modeling procedure of CAMDT-Disease first disaggregates a given SCF using temporal downscaling methods (predictWTD or FResampler1), runs EPIRICE with the downscaled weather inputs, and finally visualizes the EPIRICE outputs as disease risk compared to that of the previous year and the 30-year-climatological average. In addition, the easy-to-use graphical user interface adopted from CAMDT allows users to simulate "what-if" scenarios of disease risks over different planting dates with given SCFs. Our future work includes the simulation of the effect of crop disease on yields through the disease simulation models with the DSSAT-CSM-Rice model, as disease remains one of the most critical yield-reducing factors in the field.

Binational climate change vulnerability assessment of migratory birds in the Great Lakes Basins: Tools and impediments.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Robert S Rempel

Full Text Available Climate change is a global concern, requiring international strategies to reduce emissions, however, climate change vulnerability assessments are often local in scope with assessment areas restricted to jurisdictional boundaries. In our study we explored tools and impediments to understanding and responding to the effects of climate change on vulnerability of migratory birds from a binational perspective. We apply and assess the utility of a Climate Change Vulnerability Index on 3 focal species using distribution or niche modeling frameworks. We use the distributional forecasts to explore possible changes to jurisdictional conservation responsibilities resulting from shifting distributions for: eastern meadowlark (Sturnella magna, wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina, and hooded warbler (Setophaga citrina. We found the Climate Change Vulnerability Index to be a well-organized approach to integrating numerous lines of evidence concerning effects of climate change, and provided transparency to the final assessment of vulnerability. Under this framework, we identified that eastern meadowlark and wood thrush are highly vulnerable to climate change, but hooded warbler is less vulnerable. Our study revealed impediments to assessing and modeling vulnerability to climate change from a binational perspective, including gaps in data or modeling for climate exposure parameters. We recommend increased cross-border collaboration to enhance the availability and resources needed to improve vulnerability assessments and development of conservation strategies. We did not find evidence to suggest major shifts in jurisdictional responsibility for the 3 focal species, but results do indicate increasing responsibility for these birds in the Canadian Provinces. These Provinces should consider conservation planning to help ensure a future supply of necessary habitat for these species.

Mainstreaming Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient growth pathways into Development Finance Institutions' activities A research program on the standards, tools and metrics to support transition to the low-carbon climate-resilient development model. Paper 3 - Case Study: Integration of Climate Change into the operational activities of Agence Francaise de Developpement

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Eschalier, Claire; Deheza, Mariana; Cochran, Ian; Risler, Ophelie; Forestier, Pierre

2015-10-01

This case study examines the AFD's integration of climate and transition-related information and tools into its activities. It first presents the general investment process and the range of financial instruments used by AFD. Second, the framework elaborated in paper 2 of this series is used to analyze the upstream and downstream integration of long-term climate and transition objectives. It begins with the analysis of the upstream standards and information that are applied to transpose AFD's global strategy and Climate Action Plan into local and sectoral intervention plans and to guide AFD's initial project screening. It then explores the tools and instruments that are used during downstream process for project and program level assessments and optimization, before the final investment decision is made. Although the tools and standards implemented by AFD constitute a solid base for mainstreaming climate considerations into its activities, it seems that they could be further developed to allow for a more qualitative assessment of a project's contribution to 'low-carbon transformation' of a given country's economy. A number of opportunities and challenges to build on AFD's existing tools are identified to take this next step - first among which is the need to work with recipient countries and other development finance institutions to identify country-specific low-carbon climate resilient development pathways. (authors)

Organizational climate survey: management model tool on continuous improvement promotion in Finantial Institutional Environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alex Amancio da Silva

2016-06-01

Full Text Available The organizational climate survey has been an important tool in the corporate world, the way in which the institutions can assess and ascertain through the results, the degree of satisfaction of its employees and look through plan of action, achieve better results in both performance and production. Through an empirical research, exploratory qualitative research, with collection of secondary data, it was found that the implementation of the organizational climate survey, "Speak Frankly" from Itaú Unibanco, it could analyze data and make a plan of effective action aiming at continuous improvement in the organizational environment, serving as personnel management model. The results were favorable in the period from year 2012 to 2014 with an increase of the degree of satisfaction in four 4% and maintained excellent adherence to answer questions reaching 90% the number of employees.

Useful to Usable (U2U): Transforming climate information into usable tools to support Midwestern agricultural production

Science.gov (United States)

Prokopy, L. S.; Widhalm, M.

2014-12-01

There is a close connection between weather and climate patterns and successful agricultural production. Therefore, incorporating climate information into farm management is likely to reduce the risk of economic losses and increase profitability. While weather and climate information is becoming ever more abundant and accessible, the use of such information in the agricultural community remains limited. Useful to Usable (U2U): Transforming Climate Variability and Change Information for Cereal Crop Producers is a USDA-NIFA funded research and extension project focused on improving the use of climate information for agricultural production in the Midwestern United States by developing user-driven decision tools and training resources. The U2U team is a diverse and uniquely qualified group of climatologists, crop modelers, agronomists, and social scientists from 9 Midwestern universities and two NOAA Regional Climate Centers. Together, we strive to help producers make better long-term plans on what, when and where to plant and also how to manage crops for maximum yields and minimum environmental damage. To ensure relevance and usability of U2U products, our social science team is using a number of techniques including surveys and focus groups to integrate stakeholder interests, needs, and concerns into all aspects of U2U research. It is through this coupling of physical and social science disciplines that we strive to transform existing climate information into actionable knowledge.

The latitudinal tilts of wealth and education in Peru: Testing them, explaining them, and reflecting on them

OpenAIRE

Federico R. León

2012-01-01

Comparisons between countries around the globe reported since 1999 reveal that nations’ wealth consistently increases with distance from the Equator. Is Peru’s territory exempt from this trend? This study used GPS coordinates, questionnaire data, climate files, and census information from the 2000 Peru Demographic and Health Survey, Climate Wizard, and G-Econ data sets toreconcile the contradictory national evidence and understand the role of certain geophysical and social variables. Househol...

Climate modeling - a tool for the assessment of the paleodistribution of source and reservoir rocks

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Roscher, M.; Schneider, J.W. [Technische Univ. Bergakademie Freiberg (Germany). Inst. fuer Geologie; Berner, U. [Bundesanstalt fuer Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, Hannover (Germany). Referat Organische Geochemie/Kohlenwasserstoff-Forschung

2008-10-23

In an on-going project of BGR and TU Bergakademie Freiberg, numeric paleo-climate modeling is used as a tool for the assessment of the paleo-distribution of organic rich deposits as well as of reservoir rocks. This modeling approach is based on new ideas concerning the formation of the Pangea supercontinent. The new plate tectonic concept is supported by paleo- magnetic data as it fits the 95% confidence interval of published data. Six Permocarboniferous time slices (340, 320, 300, 290, 270, 255 Ma) were chosen within a first paleo-climate modeling approach as they represent the most important changes of the Late Paleozoic climate development. The digital maps have a resolution of 2.8 x 2.8 (T42), suitable for high-resolution climate modeling, using the PLASIM model. CO{sub 2} concentrations of the paleo-atmosphere and paleo-insolation values have been estimated by published methods. For the purpose of validation, quantitative model output, had to be transformed into qualitative parameters in order to be able to compare digital data with qualitative data of geologic indicators. The model output of surface temperatures and precipitation was therefore converted into climate zones. The reconstructed occurrences of geological indicators like aeolian sands, evaporites, reefs, coals, oil source rocks, tillites, phosphorites and cherts were then compared to the computed paleo-climate zones. Examples of the Permian Pangea show a very good agreement between model results and geological indicators. From the modeling approach we are able to identify climatic processes which lead to the deposition of hydrocarbon source and reservoir rocks. The regional assessment of such atmospheric processes may be used for the identification of the paleo-distribution of organic rich deposits or rock types suitable to form hydrocarbon reservoirs. (orig.)

An Addendum to "A New Tool for Climatic Analysis Using Köppen Climate Classification"

Science.gov (United States)

Larson, Paul R.; Lohrengel, C. Frederick, II

2014-01-01

The Köppen climatic classification system in a modified format is the most widely applied system in use today. Mapping and analysis of hundreds of arid and semiarid climate stations has made the use of the additional fourth letter in BW/BS climates essential. The addition of "s," "w," or "f" to the standard…

Using EPA Tools and Data Services to Inform Changes to Design Storm Definitions for Wastewater Utilities based on Climate Model Projections

Science.gov (United States)

Tryby, M.; Fries, J. S.; Baranowski, C.

2014-12-01

Extreme precipitation events can cause significant impacts to drinking water and wastewater utilities, including facility damage, water quality impacts, service interruptions and potential risks to human health and the environment due to localized flooding and combined sewer overflows (CSOs). These impacts will become more pronounced with the projected increases in frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events due to climate change. To model the impacts of extreme precipitation events, wastewater utilities often develop Intensity, Duration, and Frequency (IDF) rainfall curves and "design storms" for use in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). Wastewater utilities use SWMM for planning, analysis, and facility design related to stormwater runoff, combined and sanitary sewers, and other drainage systems in urban and non-urban areas. SWMM tracks (1) the quantity and quality of runoff made within each sub-catchment; and (2) the flow rate, flow depth, and quality of water in each pipe and channel during a simulation period made up of multiple time steps. In its current format, EPA SWMM does not consider climate change projection data. Climate change may affect the relationship between intensity, duration, and frequency described by past rainfall events. Therefore, EPA is integrating climate projection data available in the Climate Resilience Evaluation and Awareness Tool (CREAT) into SWMM. CREAT is a climate risk assessment tool for utilities that provides downscaled climate change projection data for changes in the amount of rainfall in a 24-hour period for various extreme precipitation events (e.g., from 5-year to 100-year storm events). Incorporating climate change projections into SWMM will provide wastewater utilities with more comprehensive data they can use in planning for future storm events, thereby reducing the impacts to the utility and customers served from flooding and stormwater issues.

Geophysical Tools, Challenges and Perspectives Related to Natural Hazards, Climate Change and Food Security

Science.gov (United States)

Fucugauchi, J. U.

2013-05-01

In the coming decades a changing climate and natural hazards will likely increase the vulnerability of agricultural and other food production infrastructures, posing increasing treats to industrialized and developing economies. While food security concerns affect us globally, the huge differences among countries in stocks, population size, poverty levels, economy, technologic development, transportation, health care systems and basic infrastructure will pose a much larger burden on populations in the developing and less developed world. In these economies, increase in the magnitude, duration and frequency of droughts, floods, hurricanes, rising sea levels, heat waves, thunderstorms, freezing events and other phenomena will pose severe costs on the population. For this presentation, we concentrate on a geophysical perspective of the problems, tools available, challenges and short and long-term perspectives. In many instances, a range of natural hazards are considered as unforeseen catastrophes, which suddenly affect without warning, resulting in major losses. Although the forecasting capacity in the different situations arising from climate change and natural hazards is still limited, there are a range of tools available to assess scenarios and forecast models for developing and implementing better mitigation strategies and prevention programs. Earth observation systems, geophysical instrumental networks, satellite observatories, improved understanding of phenomena, expanded global and regional databases, geographic information systems, higher capacity for computer modeling, numerical simulations, etc provide a scientific-technical framework for developing strategies. Hazard prevention and mitigation programs will result in high costs globally, however major costs and challenges concentrate on the less developed economies already affected by poverty, famines, health problems, social inequalities, poor infrastructure, low life expectancy, high population growth

Climate Neutral Research Campuses | NREL

Science.gov (United States)

the background. Set an example for climate neutrality. Use NREL's climate action planning process and more. Climate Action Planning Process Identify the best technology options for a climate action plan . Climate Action Planning Tool Identify the best technology options for a climate action plan. Technology

LandCaRe-DSS - model based tools for irrigation management under climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Dotterweich, Markus; Wilkinson, Kristina; Cassel, Martin; Scherzer, Jörg; Köstner, Barbara; Berg, Michael; Grocholl, Jürgen

2015-04-01

Climate change is expected to have a strong influence on agricultural systems in the future. It will be important for decision makers and stakeholders to assess the impact of climate change at the farm and regional level in order to facilitate and maintain a sustainable and profitable farming infrastructure. Climate change impact studies have to incorporate aspects of uncertainty and the underlying knowledge is constantly expanding and improving. Decision support systems (DSS) with flexible data bases are therefore a useful tool for management and planning: different models can be applied under varying boundary conditions within a conceptual framework and the results can be used e.g. to show the effects of climate change scenarios and different land management options. Within this project, the already existing LandCaRe DSS will be further enhanced and improved. A first prototype had been developed for two regions in eastern Germany, mainly to show the effects of climate change on yields, nutrient balances and farm economy. The new model version will be tested and applied for a region in north-western Germany (Landkreis Uelzen) where arable land makes up about 50% of overall land-use and where 80 % of the arable land is already irrigated. For local decision makers, it will be important to know how water demand and water availability are likely to change in the future: Is more water needed for irrigation? Is more water actually available for irrigation? Will the existing limits for ground water withdrawal be sufficient for farmers to irrigate their crops? How can the irrigation water demand be influenced by land management options like the use of different crops and varieties or different farming and irrigation techniques? The main tasks of the project are (I) the integration of an improved irrigation model, (II) the development of a standardized interface to apply the DSS in different regions, (III) to optimize the graphical user interface, (IV) to transfer and

Tools for assessing climate impacts on fish and wildlife

Science.gov (United States)

Chad B. Wilsey; Joshua J. Lawler; Edwin P. Maurer; Donald McKenzie; Patricia A. Townsend; Richard Gwozdz; James A. Freund; Keala Hagmann; Karen M. Hutten

2013-01-01

Climate change is already affecting many fish and wildlife populations. Managing these populations requires an understanding of the nature, magnitude, and distribution of current and future climate impacts. Scientists and managers have at their disposal a wide array of models for projecting climate impacts that can be used to build such an understanding. Here, we...

Greenhouse effect gases and climatic change: quantification and tools to fight against the emissions; Gaz a effet de serre et changement climatique: quantification et instruments de lutte contre des emissions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Bizec, R.F

2006-07-01

The greenhouse effect gases are considered responsible of the climatic change. Their consequences are numerous: increase of the sea level, displacement of the climatic areas, modification of the forests ecosystems, rarefaction of water, progressively decrease of glaciers... This fast modification of the climate would lead to the increase of natural hazards as hurricanes, storms, hails and so on. It is then a necessity to reduce as fast as possible the greenhouse effect gases. The author describes in a first part the methods of the greenhouse effect gases quantification and in the second part the tools to fight these gases, regulations, standards, economic tools, national tools and the projects. (A.L.B.)

Point Climat no. 22 'Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy is laying the initial foundations for a European agricultural climate policy'

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Foucherot, Claudine; Bellassen, Valentin

2012-01-01

Among the publications of CDC Climat Research, 'Climate Briefs' presents, in a few pages, hot topics in climate change policy. This issue addresses the following points: The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has had a very small climate component since 1992. The recent inclusion of green payments and the climate risk management tools proposed for the CAP for the period beyond 2013 illustrate the European Commission's willingness to expand this climate component. Furthermore, there is little mention of the agricultural sector in the tools rolled out by the European climate policy, particularly those derived from the 2009 'Climate and Energy' Package. Therefore, even if this autumn's parliamentary debate results in the reform proposals being diluted, the post-2013 CAP could nevertheless become a principal tool for a common EU climate policy in the agricultural sector

Stakeholder views of management and decision support tools to integrate climate change into Great Lakes Lake Whitefish management

Science.gov (United States)

Lynch, Abigail J.; Taylor, William W.; McCright, Aaron M.

2016-01-01

Decision support tools can aid decision making by systematically incorporating information, accounting for uncertainties, and facilitating evaluation between alternatives. Without user buy-in, however, decision support tools can fail to influence decision-making processes. We surveyed fishery researchers, managers, and fishers affiliated with the Lake Whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis fishery in the 1836 Treaty Waters of Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior to assess opinions of current and future management needs to identify barriers to, and opportunities for, developing a decision support tool based on Lake Whitefish recruitment projections with climate change. Approximately 64% of 39 respondents were satisfied with current management, and nearly 85% agreed that science was well integrated into management programs. Though decision support tools can facilitate science integration into management, respondents suggest that they face significant implementation barriers, including lack of political will to change management and perceived uncertainty in decision support outputs. Recommendations from this survey can inform development of decision support tools for fishery management in the Great Lakes and other regions.

Empowering America's Communities to Prepare for the Effects of Climate Change: Developing Actionable Climate Science Under the President's Climate Action Plan

Science.gov (United States)

Duffy, P. B.; Colohan, P.; Driggers, R.; Herring, D.; Laurier, F.; Petes, L.; Ruffo, S.; Tilmes, C.; Venkataraman, B.; Weaver, C. P.

2014-12-01

Effective adaptation to impacts of climate change requires best-available information. To be most useful, this information should be easily found, well-documented, and translated into tools that decision-makers use and trust. To meet these needs, the President's Climate Action Plan includes efforts to develop "actionable climate science". The Climate Data Initiative (CDI) leverages the Federal Government's extensive, open data resources to stimulate innovation and private-sector entrepreneurship in support of actions to prepare for climate change. The Initiative forges commitments and partnerships from the private, NGO, academic, and public sectors to create data-driven tools. Open data from Federal agencies to support this innovation is available on Climate.Data.gov, initially focusing on coastal flooding but soon to expand to topics including food, energy, water, energy, transportation, and health. The Climate Resilience Toolkit (CRT) will facilitate access to data-driven resilience tools, services, and best practices, including those accessible through the CDI. The CRT will also include access to training and tutorials, case studies, engagement forums, and other information sources. The Climate Action Plan also calls for a public-private partnership on extreme weather risk, with the goal of generating improved assessments of risk from different types of extreme weather events, using methods and data that are transparent and accessible. Finally, the U.S. Global Change Research Program and associated agencies work to advance the science necessary to inform decisions and sustain assessments. Collectively, these efforts represent increased emphasis across the Federal Government on the importance of information to support climate resilience.

EdGCM: Research Tools for Training the Climate Change Generation

Science.gov (United States)

Chandler, M. A.; Sohl, L. E.; Zhou, J.; Sieber, R.

2011-12-01

Climate scientists employ complex computer simulations of the Earth's physical systems to prepare climate change forecasts, study the physical mechanisms of climate, and to test scientific hypotheses and computer parameterizations. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment Report (2007) demonstrates unequivocally that policy makers rely heavily on such Global Climate Models (GCMs) to assess the impacts of potential economic and emissions scenarios. However, true climate modeling capabilities are not disseminated to the majority of world governments or U.S. researchers - let alone to the educators who will be training the students who are about to be presented with a world full of climate change stakeholders. The goal is not entirely quixotic; in fact, by the mid-1990's prominent climate scientists were predicting with certainty that schools and politicians would "soon" be running GCMs on laptops [Randall, 1996]. For a variety of reasons this goal was never achieved (nor even really attempted). However, around the same time NASA and the National Science Foundation supported a small pilot project at Columbia University to show the potential of putting sophisticated computer climate models - not just "demos" or "toy models" - into the hands of non-specialists. The Educational Global Climate Modeling Project (EdGCM) gave users access to a real global climate model and provided them with the opportunity to experience the details of climate model setup, model operation, post-processing and scientific visualization. EdGCM was designed for use in both research and education - it is a full-blown research GCM, but the ultimate goal is to develop a capability to embed these crucial technologies across disciplines, networks, platforms, and even across academia and industry. With this capability in place we can begin training the skilled workforce that is necessary to deal with the multitude of climate impacts that will occur over the coming decades. To

Using a map-based assessment tool for the development of cost-effective WFD river basin action programmes in a changing climate.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaspersen, Bjarke Stoltze; Jacobsen, Torsten Vammen; Butts, Michael Brian; Jensen, Niels H; Boegh, Eva; Seaby, Lauren Paige; Müller, Henrik Gioertz; Kjaer, Tyge

2016-08-01

For the 2nd and 3rd river basin management cycles (2015-2027) of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), EU Member States are required to fully integrate climate change into the process of river basin management planning (RBMP). Complying with the main WFD objective of achieving 'good ecological status' in all water bodies in Denmark requires Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to reduce nitrogen (N) pollution from point and diffuse sources. Denmark is among the world's most intensively farmed countries and in spite of thirty years of significant policy actions to reduce diffuse nutrient emissions, there is still a need for further reductions. In addition, the impacts of climate change are projected to lead to a situation where nutrient loads will have to be reduced still further in comparison to current climate conditions. There is an urgent need to address this challenge in WFD action programmes in order to develop robust and cost-effective adaptation strategies for the next WFD RBMP cycles. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate and discuss how a map-based PoMs assessment tool can support the development of adaptive and cost-effective strategies to reduce N losses in the Isefjord and Roskilde Fjord River Basin in the north east of Denmark. The tool facilitates assessments of the application of agri-environmental measures that are targeted towards low retention agricultural areas, where limited or no surface and subsurface N reduction takes place. Effects of climate change on nitrate leaching were evaluated using the dynamic agro-ecosystem model 'Daisy'. Results show that nitrate leaching rates increase by approx. 25% under current management practices. This impact outweighs the expected total N reduction effect of Baseline 2015 and the first RBMP in the case study river basin. The particular PoMs investigated in our study show that WFD N reduction targets can be achieved by targeted land use changes on approx. 4% of the agricultural area under current climate conditions

Climate and Health Vulnerability to Vector-Borne Diseases: Increasing Resilience under Climate Change Conditions in Africa

Science.gov (United States)

Ceccato, P.

2015-12-01

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), the City University of New York (CUNY) and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with NASA SERVIR are developing tools to monitor climate variables (precipitation, temperature, vegetation, water bodies, inundation) that help projects in Africa to increase resilience to climate change for vector-borne diseases ( malaria, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, and schistosomiasis). Through the development of new products to monitor precipitation, water bodies and inundation, IRI, CUNY and JPL provide tools and capacity building to research communities; ministries of health; the WMO Global Framework for Climate and Services; and World Health Organization in Africa to: 1) Develop research teams' ability to appropriately use climate data as part of their research 2) Enable research teams and ministries to integrate climate information into social and economic drivers of vulnerability and opportunities for adaptation to climate change 3) Inform better policies and programs for climate change adaptation. This oral presentation will demonstrate how IRI, CUNY, and JPL developed new products, tools and capacity building to achieve the three objectives mentioned above with examples in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Malawi.

DESYCO: a Decision Support System to provide climate services for coastal stakeholders dealing with climate change impacts.

Science.gov (United States)

Torresan, S.; Gallina, V.; Giannini, V.; Rizzi, J.; Zabeo, A.; Critto, A.; Marcomini, A.

2012-04-01

At the international level climate services are recognized as innovative tools aimed at providing and distributing climate data and information according to the needs of end-users. Furthermore, needs-based climate services are extremely effective to manage climate risks and take advantage of the opportunities associated with climate change impacts. To date, climate services are mainly related to climate models that supply climate data (e.g. temperature, precipitations) at different spatial and time scales. However, there is a significant gap of tools aimed at providing information about risks and impacts induced by climate change and allowing non-expert stakeholders to use both climate-model and climate-impact data. DESYCO is a GIS-Decision Support System aimed at the integrated assessment of multiple climate change impacts on vulnerable coastal systems (e.g. beaches, river deltas, estuaries and lagoons, wetlands, agricultural and urban areas). It is an open source software that manages different input data (e.g. raster or shapefiles) coming from climate models (e.g. global and regional climate projections) and high resolution impact models (e.g. hydrodynamic, hydrological and biogeochemical simulations) in order to provide hazard, exposure, susceptibility, risk and damage maps for the identification and prioritization of hot-spot areas and to provide a basis for the definition of coastal adaptation and management strategies. Within the CLIM-RUN project (FP7) DESYCO is proposed as an helpful tool to bridge the gap between climate data and stakeholder needs and will be applied to the coastal area of the North Adriatic Sea (Italy) in order to provide climate services for local authorities involved in coastal zone management. Accordingly, a first workshop was held in Venice (Italy) with coastal authorities, climate experts and climate change risk experts, in order to start an iterative exchange of information about the knowledge related to climate change, climate

The need for combining IEA and IE tools. The potential effects of a global ban on PVC on climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kleijn, Rene; Van der Voet, Ester; Udo de Haes, Helias A.

2008-01-01

Over the last decades the concepts of Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) and Industrial Ecology (IE), both claiming to provide analyses and solutions for sustainability issues, have been developed separately as they emerged in response to questions from different policy-fields. In both fields, specific tools are used to support national and international environmental policy. The focus of IEA and IE tools, however, is different. IEA tools focus on one or a limited number of specific environmental issues. They often model the chain environmental processes with high spatial (and temporal) resolution, but have a low resolution for the material structure of the economy and only partly take into account indirect effects that occur via physical and socio-economic linkages. IE tools take into account all environmental issues related to a specific substance or product. They have a high resolution for the material structure of the economy and take into account indirect effects that occur via physical linkages, however, their environmental modelling is very limited. Both IE and IEA tools have proven to be very useful and neither is superior to the other. However, a combination of both can provide additional information that can be used for more effective policy making. We use the case of a hypothetical world-wide ban on PVC to show that a measure that is not directly related to climate change could still have significant climate effects. This indirect effect is a result of the linkages of material flows in society. We show that IEA tools are not well suited to include these types of effects and that IE tools can fill this gap partially. What is really needed is a broader systems perspective that takes into account the full range of possible side-effects of environmental policy measures. (author)

Climate and Population Health Vulnerabilities to Vector-Borne Diseases: Increasing Resilience Under Climate Change Conditions in Africa

Science.gov (United States)

Ceccato, P.; McDonald, K. C.; Podest, E.; De La Torre Juarez, M.; Kruczkiewicz, A.; Lessel, J.; Jensen, K.; Thomson, M. C.

2014-12-01

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), the City University of New York (CUNY) and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with NASA SERVIR are developing tools to monitor climate variables (precipitation, temperature, vegetation, water bodies, inundation) that help projects in Africa to increase resilience to climate change for vector-borne diseases (i.e. malaria, trypanosomiasis, leishmaniasis, and schistosomiasis). Through the development of new products to monitor precipitation, water bodies and inundation, IRI, CUNY and JPL provide tools and capacity building to research communities, ministries of health and World Health Organization in Africa to: 1) Develop research teams' ability to appropriately use climate data as part of their research 2) Enable research teams and ministries to integrate climate information into social and economic drivers of vulnerability and opportunities for adaptation to climate change 3) Inform better policies and programs for climate change adaptation. This oral presentation will demonstrate how IRI, CUNY, and JPL developed new products, tools and capacity building to achieve the three objectives mentioned above.

GLIMPSE: A decision support tool for simultaneously achieving our air quality management and climate change mitigation goals

Science.gov (United States)

Pinder, R. W.; Akhtar, F.; Loughlin, D. H.; Henze, D. K.; Bowman, K. W.

2012-12-01

Poor air quality, ecosystem damages, and climate change all are caused by the combustion of fossil fuels, yet environmental management often addresses each of these challenges separately. This can lead to sub-optimal strategies and unintended consequences. Here we present GLIMPSE -- a decision support tool for simultaneously achieving our air quality and climate change mitigation goals. GLIMPSE comprises of two types of models, (i) the adjoint of the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model, to calculate the relationship between emissions and impacts at high spatial resolution, and (ii) the MARKAL energy system model, to calculate the relationship between energy technologies and emissions. This presentation will demonstrate how GLIMPSE can be used to explore energy scenarios to better achieve both improved air quality and mitigate climate change. Second, this presentation will discuss how space-based observations can be incorporated into GLIMPSE to improve decision-making. NASA satellite products, namely ozone radiative forcing from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES), are used to extend GLIMPSE to include the impact of emissions on ozone radiative forcing. This provides a much needed observational constraint on ozone radiative forcing.

First International Workshop on Variability in Software Architecture (VARSA 2011)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Galster, Matthias; Avgeriou, Paris; Weyns, Danny; Mannisto, Tomi

2011-01-01

Variability is the ability of a software artifact to be changed for a specific context. Mechanisms to accommodate variability include software product lines, configuration wizards and tools in commercial software, configuration interfaces of software components, or the dynamic runtime composition of

HydroClimATe: hydrologic and climatic analysis toolkit

Science.gov (United States)

Dickinson, Jesse; Hanson, Randall T.; Predmore, Steven K.

2014-01-01

The potential consequences of climate variability and climate change have been identified as major issues for the sustainability and availability of the worldwide water resources. Unlike global climate change, climate variability represents deviations from the long-term state of the climate over periods of a few years to several decades. Currently, rich hydrologic time-series data are available, but the combination of data preparation and statistical methods developed by the U.S. Geological Survey as part of the Groundwater Resources Program is relatively unavailable to hydrologists and engineers who could benefit from estimates of climate variability and its effects on periodic recharge and water-resource availability. This report documents HydroClimATe, a computer program for assessing the relations between variable climatic and hydrologic time-series data. HydroClimATe was developed for a Windows operating system. The software includes statistical tools for (1) time-series preprocessing, (2) spectral analysis, (3) spatial and temporal analysis, (4) correlation analysis, and (5) projections. The time-series preprocessing tools include spline fitting, standardization using a normal or gamma distribution, and transformation by a cumulative departure. The spectral analysis tools include discrete Fourier transform, maximum entropy method, and singular spectrum analysis. The spatial and temporal analysis tool is empirical orthogonal function analysis. The correlation analysis tools are linear regression and lag correlation. The projection tools include autoregressive time-series modeling and generation of many realizations. These tools are demonstrated in four examples that use stream-flow discharge data, groundwater-level records, gridded time series of precipitation data, and the Multivariate ENSO Index.

Climatic projections and socio economic impacts of the climatic change in Colombia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Eslava R, Jesus Antonio; Pabon Caicedo, Jose Daniel

2001-01-01

For the task of working out climate change projections, different methodologies have been in use, from simple extrapolations to sophisticated statistical and mathematical tools. Today, the tools most used are the models of the general circulation of the atmosphere and ocean, which include many processes of other climate components (biosphere, cryosphere, continental surface models, etc.). Different global and regional scenarios have been generated with those models. They may be of great utility in calculating projections and future scenarios for Colombia, but the representation of the country's climate in those models has to be improved in order to get projections with a higher level of certainty. The application of climate models and of the techniques of down scaling in studies of climate change is new both in Colombia and tropical America, and was introduced through the National University of Colombia's project on local and national climate change. In the first phase of the project, version 3 of the CCM (Climate Community Model) of NCAR was implemented. Parallel to that, and based on national (grid) data, maps have been prepared of the monthly temperature and precipitation of Colombia, which were used to validate the model

End-member modelling as a tool for climate reconstruction-An Eastern Mediterranean case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Beuscher, Sarah; Krüger, Stefan; Ehrmann, Werner; Schmiedl, Gerhard; Milker, Yvonne; Arz, Helge; Schulz, Hartmut

2017-01-01

The Eastern Mediterranean Sea is a sink for terrigenous sediments from North Africa, Europe and Asia Minor. Its sediments therefore provide valuable information on the climate dynamics in the source areas and the associated transport processes. We present a high-resolution dataset of sediment core M40/4_SL71, which was collected SW of Crete and spans the last ca. 180 kyr. We analysed the clay mineral composition, the grain size distribution within the silt fraction, and the abundance of major and trace elements. We tested the potential of end-member modelling on these sedimentological datasets as a tool for reconstructing the climate variability in the source regions and the associated detrital input. For each dataset, we modelled three end members. All end members were assigned to a specific provenance and sedimentary process. In total, three end members were related to the Saharan dust input, and five were related to the fluvial sediment input. One end member was strongly associated with the sapropel layers. The Saharan dust end members of the grain size and clay mineral datasets generally suggest enhanced dust export into the Eastern Mediterranean Sea during the dry phases with short-term increases during Heinrich events. During the African Humid Periods, dust export was reduced but may not have completely ceased. The loading patterns of two fluvial end members show a strong relationship with the Northern Hemisphere insolation, and all fluvial end members document enhanced input during the African Humid Periods. The sapropel end member most likely reflects the fixation of redox-sensitive elements within the anoxic sapropel layers. Our results exemplify that end-member modelling is a valuable tool for interpreting extensive and multidisciplinary datasets.

Addressing climate and energy misconceptions - teaching tools offered by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)

Science.gov (United States)

Gold, A. U.; Ledley, T. S.; Kirk, K. B.; Grogan, M.; McCaffrey, M. S.; Buhr, S. M.; Manduca, C. A.; Fox, S.; Niepold, F.; Howell, C.; Lynds, S. E.

2011-12-01

Despite a prevalence of peer-reviewed scientific research and high-level reports by intergovernmental agencies (e.g., IPCC) that document changes in our climate and consequences for human societies, the public discourse regards these topics as controversial and sensitive. The chasm between scientific-based understanding of climate systems and public understanding can most easily be addressed via high quality, science-based education on these topics. Well-trained and confident educators are required to provide this education. However, climate science and energy awareness are complex topics that are rapidly evolving and have a great potential for controversy. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary nature of climate science further increases the difficulty for teachers to stay abreast of the science and the policy. Research has shown that students and educators alike hold misconceptions about the climate system in general and the causes and effects of climate change in particular. The NSF-funded CLEAN Pathway (http://cleanet.org) as part of the National Science Digital Library (http://www.nsdl.org) strives to address these needs and help educators address misconceptions by providing high quality learning resources and professional development opportunities to support educators of grade levels 6 through 16. The materials focus on teaching climate science and energy use. The scope and framework of the CLEAN Pathway is defined by the Essential Principles of Climate Science (CCSP, 2009) and the Energy Literacy Principles recently developed by the Department of Energy. Following this literacy-based approach, CLEAN helps with developing mental models to address misconceptions around climate science and energy awareness through a number of different avenues. These are: 1) Professional development opportunities for educators - interactive webinars for secondary teachers and virtual workshops for college faculty, 2) A collection of scientifically and pedagogically reviewed, high

Western land managers will need all available tools for adapting to climate change, including grazing: a critique of Beschta et al.

Science.gov (United States)

Svejcar, Tony; Boyd, Chad; Davies, Kirk; Madsen, Matthew; Bates, Jon; Sheley, Roger; Marlow, Clayton; Bohnert, David; Borman, Mike; Mata-Gonzàlez, Ricardo; Buckhouse, John; Stringham, Tamzen; Perryman, Barry; Swanson, Sherman; Tate, Kenneth; George, Mel; Ruyle, George; Roundy, Bruce; Call, Chris; Jensen, Kevin; Launchbaugh, Karen; Gearhart, Amanda; Vermeire, Lance; Tanaka, John; Derner, Justin; Frasier, Gary; Havstad, Kris

2014-06-01

In a previous article, Beschta et al. (Environ Manag 51(2):474-491, 2013) argue that grazing by large ungulates (both native and domestic) should be eliminated or greatly reduced on western public lands to reduce potential climate change impacts. The authors did not present a balanced synthesis of the scientific literature, and their publication is more of an opinion article. Their conclusions do not reflect the complexities associated with herbivore grazing. Because grazing is a complex ecological process, synthesis of the scientific literature can be a challenge. Legacy effects of uncontrolled grazing during the homestead era further complicate analysis of current grazing impacts. Interactions of climate change and grazing will depend on the specific situation. For example, increasing atmospheric CO₂ and temperatures may increase accumulation of fine fuels (primarily grasses) and thus increase wildfire risk. Prescribed grazing by livestock is one of the few management tools available for reducing fine fuel accumulation. While there are certainly points on the landscape where herbivore impacts can be identified, there are also vast grazed areas where impacts are minimal. Broad scale reduction of domestic and wild herbivores to help native plant communities cope with climate change will be unnecessary because over the past 20-50 years land managers have actively sought to bring populations of native and domestic herbivores in balance with the potential of vegetation and soils. To cope with a changing climate, land managers will need access to all available vegetation management tools, including grazing.

Climate Effects on Health

Science.gov (United States)

... Guidance and Trainings Webinars Data and Tools Publications Climate Effects on Health Recommend on Facebook Tweet Share ... effects has been excerpted from the Third National Climate Assessment’s Health Chapter . Additional information regarding the health ...

Klimanavigator - Climate Navigator - Gateway to climate knowledge in Germany

Science.gov (United States)

Schuck-Zöller, Susanne

2013-04-01

Objective More than 50 German research institutions and networks are represented on www.klimanavigator.de, a common platform, where information about their work, and the latest findings from climate research and adaptation can be found. Thus Klimanavigator as a gateway to climate knowledge provides a information portal for those who have to respond to climate change. The internet portal gives an overview of the present state of research and is estimated as a decision support tool for appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures. Target Groups The portal collects the German climate research institutions to publish their scientific knowledge in a non-scientific language. Economists, policymakers, administration and the media are bound to find the names of scientific experts and institutions by an elaborated research tool. Methodology The chapter "Dossiers" is edited by the Klimanavigator-Coordinator CSC. It gathers information to a special issue looked upon from various points of view. Publications of outstanding German scientists are presented side by side, current knowledge is being synthesized, scientifically reviewed and disseminated. The latest news from climate and adaptation research is presented in an own chapter, dedicated to the press releases of the portal members. Via RSS-feed the press releases are collected from the different partner institutions. Thirdly, portraits of the member institutions, that are individually edited by themselves, draw a map of science in Germany and help to find appropriate cooperation partners. For the future further development is being planned. Common Management Klimanavigator is being managed by the partners in common. The main decisions concerning the concept and shape of the portal are made by the partners' assembly. An elected editorial committee decides about the content between the assemblies. The Climate Service Center (part of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht) concentrates on facilitating the cooperation, and

Interannual variations in length-of-day (LOD) as a tool to assess climate variability and climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Lehmann, E.

2016-12-01

On interannual time scales the atmosphere affects significantly fluctuations in the geodetic quantity of length-of-day (LOD). This effect is directly proportional to perturbations in the relative angular momentum of the atmosphere (AAM) computed from zonal winds. During El Niño events tropospheric westerlies increase due to elevated sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Pacific inducing peak anomalies in relative AAM and correspondingly, in LOD. However, El Niño events affect LOD variations differently strong and the causes of this varying effect are yet not clear. Here, we investigate the LOD-El Niño relationship in the 20th and 21st century (1982-2100) whether the quantity of LOD can be used as a geophysical tool to assess variability and change in a future climate. In our analysis we applied a windowed discrete Fourier transform on all de-seasonalized data to remove climatic signals outside of the El Niño frequency band. LOD (data: IERS) was related in space and time to relative AAM and SSTs (data: ERA-40 reanalysis, IPCC ECHAM05-OM1 20C, A1B). Results from mapped Pearson correlation coefficients and time frequency behavior analysis identified a teleconnection pattern that we term the EN≥65%-index. The EN≥65%-index prescribes a significant change in variation in length-of-day of +65% and more related to (1) SST anomalies of >2° in the Pacific Niño region (160°E-80°W, 5°S-5°N), (2) corresponding stratospheric warming anomalies of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), and (3) strong westerly winds in the lower equatorial stratosphere. In our analysis we show that the coupled atmosphere-ocean conditions prescribed in the EN≥65%-index apply to the extreme El Niño events of 19982/83 and 1997/98, and to 75% of all El Niño events in the last third of the 21st century. At that period of time the EN≥65%-index describes a projected altered base state of the equatorial Pacific that shows almost continuous El Niño conditions under climate warming.

Heat and Health in a Changing Climate: Building a Decision Support Tool for California Public Health Officials

Science.gov (United States)

Steinberg, N.

2017-12-01

There is considerable interest in overlaying climate projections with social vulnerability maps as a mechanism for targeting community adaptation efforts. Yet the identification of relevant factors for adaptation- and resilience-based decisions remain a challenge. Our findings show that successful adaptation interventions are more likely when factors are grouped and spatially represented. By designing a decision-support tool that is focused on informing long-term planning to mitigate the public health impacts of extreme heat, communities can more easily integrate climate, land use, and population characteristics into local planning processes. The ability to compare risks and potential health impacts across census tracts may also position local practitioners to leverage scarce resources. This presentation will discuss the information gaps identified by planners and public health practitioners throughout California and illustrate the spatial variations of key health risk factors.

Climate@Home: Crowdsourcing Climate Change Research

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, C.; Yang, C.; Li, J.; Sun, M.; Bambacus, M.

2011-12-01

Climate change deeply impacts human wellbeing. Significant amounts of resources have been invested in building super-computers that are capable of running advanced climate models, which help scientists understand climate change mechanisms, and predict its trend. Although climate change influences all human beings, the general public is largely excluded from the research. On the other hand, scientists are eagerly seeking communication mediums for effectively enlightening the public on climate change and its consequences. The Climate@Home project is devoted to connect the two ends with an innovative solution: crowdsourcing climate computing to the general public by harvesting volunteered computing resources from the participants. A distributed web-based computing platform will be built to support climate computing, and the general public can 'plug-in' their personal computers to participate in the research. People contribute the spare computing power of their computers to run a computer model, which is used by scientists to predict climate change. Traditionally, only super-computers could handle such a large computing processing load. By orchestrating massive amounts of personal computers to perform atomized data processing tasks, investments on new super-computers, energy consumed by super-computers, and carbon release from super-computers are reduced. Meanwhile, the platform forms a social network of climate researchers and the general public, which may be leveraged to raise climate awareness among the participants. A portal is to be built as the gateway to the climate@home project. Three types of roles and the corresponding functionalities are designed and supported. The end users include the citizen participants, climate scientists, and project managers. Citizen participants connect their computing resources to the platform by downloading and installing a computing engine on their personal computers. Computer climate models are defined at the server side. Climate

Ethical decision-making climate in the ICU: theoretical framework and validation of a self-assessment tool.

Science.gov (United States)

Van den Bulcke, Bo; Piers, Ruth; Jensen, Hanne Irene; Malmgren, Johan; Metaxa, Victoria; Reyners, Anna K; Darmon, Michael; Rusinova, Katerina; Talmor, Daniel; Meert, Anne-Pascale; Cancelliere, Laura; Zubek, Làszló; Maia, Paolo; Michalsen, Andrej; Decruyenaere, Johan; Kompanje, Erwin J O; Azoulay, Elie; Meganck, Reitske; Van de Sompel, Ariëlla; Vansteelandt, Stijn; Vlerick, Peter; Vanheule, Stijn; Benoit, Dominique D

2018-02-23

Literature depicts differences in ethical decision-making (EDM) between countries and intensive care units (ICU). To better conceptualise EDM climate in the ICU and to validate a tool to assess EDM climates. Using a modified Delphi method, we built a theoretical framework and a self-assessment instrument consisting of 35 statements. This Ethical Decision-Making Climate Questionnaire (EDMCQ) was developed to capture three EDM domains in healthcare: interdisciplinary collaboration and communication; leadership by physicians; and ethical environment. This instrument was subsequently validated among clinicians working in 68 adult ICUs in 13 European countries and the USA. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine the structure of the EDM climate as perceived by clinicians. Measurement invariance was tested to make sure that variables used in the analysis were comparable constructs across different groups. Of 3610 nurses and 1137 physicians providing ICU bedside care, 2275 (63.1%) and 717 (62.9%) participated respectively. Statistical analyses revealed that a shortened 32-item version of the EDMCQ scale provides a factorial valid measurement of seven facets of the extent to which clinicians perceive an EDM climate: self-reflective and empowering leadership by physicians; practice and culture of open interdisciplinary reflection; culture of not avoiding end-of-life decisions; culture of mutual respect within the interdisciplinary team; active involvement of nurses in end-of-life care and decision-making; active decision-making by physicians; and practice and culture of ethical awareness. Measurement invariance of the EDMCQ across occupational groups was shown, reflecting that nurses and physicians interpret the EDMCQ items in a similar manner. The 32-item version of the EDMCQ might enrich the EDM climate measurement, clinicians' behaviour and the performance of healthcare organisations. This instrument offers opportunities to develop tailored ICU

Improving Climate Communication through Comprehensive Linguistic Analyses Using Computational Tools

Science.gov (United States)

Gann, T. M.; Matlock, T.

2014-12-01

An important lesson on climate communication research is that there is no single way to reach out and inform the public. Different groups conceptualize climate issues in different ways and different groups have different values and assumptions. This variability makes it extremely difficult to effectively and objectively communicate climate information. One of the main challenges is the following: How do we acquire a better understanding of how values and assumptions vary across groups, including political groups? A necessary starting point is to pay close attention to the linguistic content of messages used across current popular media sources. Careful analyses of that information—including how it is realized in language for conservative and progressive media—may ultimately help climate scientists, government agency officials, journalists and others develop more effective messages. Past research has looked at partisan media coverage of climate change, but little attention has been given to the fine-grained linguistic content of such media. And when researchers have done detailed linguistic analyses, they have relied primarily on hand-coding, an approach that is costly, labor intensive, and time-consuming. Our project, building on recent work on partisan news media (Gann & Matlock, 2014; under review) uses high dimensional semantic analyses and other methods of automated classification techniques from the field of natural language processing to quantify how climate issues are characterized in media sources that differ according to political orientation. In addition to discussing varied linguistic patterns, we share new methods for improving climate communication for varied stakeholders, and for developing better assessments of their effectiveness.

A "Carbon Reduction Challenge" as tool for undergraduate engagement on climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Cobb, K. M.; Toktay, B.

2017-12-01

Institutions of higher education must meet the challenges of educating the generation that must make significant progress towards stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases. However, the interdisciplinary nature of the climate change problem, and the fact that solutions will necessarily involve manipulating natural systems, advancing energy technologies, and developing innovative policy instruments means that traditional disciplinary tracks are not well-suited for the task. Furthermore, institutions must not only equip students with fundamental knowledge about climate and energy, but they must empower a generation of students to become part of the climate change solution. Here we present the cumulative results of the `Carbon Reduction Challenge' - a team-based competition to reduce CO2 that is conducted in an interdisciplinary undergraduate class called "Energy, the Environment, and Society" at Georgia Institute of Technology. Working with 30 undergraduate students from all years and all majors, we demonstrate how student teams move through a highly-structured timeline of deliverables towards achieving their team's end-of-semester goals. We discuss the importance of student creativity, ingenuity, initiative, and perseverance in achieving project outcomes, which in 2017 topped 5 million pounds of CO2 reductions - the all-time record for the class. Student-driven reductions on a year-to-year basis track an exponential growth curve through time. Based on the success of a pilot Carbon Reduction Challenge conducted in the summer of 2017, we present evidence that student-led partnerships with large corporations represents the area of largest potential for student success. Such partnerships deliver significant value added to students (professional conduct, on-the-job training, networking), the corporate partner (cost savings, talent recruitment, and public relations), and to the higher education institution (corporate relations contacts). In summary, the Carbon Reduction

The Tribal Lands Collaboratory: Building partnerships and developing tools to support local Tribal community response to climate change.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, K. D.; Wee, B.; Kuslikis, A.

2015-12-01

Response of Tribal nations and Tribal communities to current and emerging climate change challenges requires active participation of stakeholders who have effective access to relevant data, information and analytical tools. The Tribal Lands Collaboratory (TLC), currently under development, is a joint effort between the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri), and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). The vision of the TLC is to create an integrative platform that enables coordination between multiple stakeholders (e.g. Tribal resource managers, Tribal College faculty and students, farmers, ranchers, and other local community members) to collaborate on locally relevant climate change issues. The TLC is intended to facilitate the transformation of data into actionable information that can inform local climate response planning. The TLC will provide the technical mechanisms to access, collect and analyze data from both internal and external sources (e.g. NASA's Giovanni climate data portal, Ameriflux or USA National Phenology Network) while also providing the social scaffolds to enable collaboration across Tribal communities and with members of the national climate change research community. The prototype project focuses on phenology, a branch of science focused on relationships between climate and the seasonal timing of biological phenomena. Monitoring changes in the timing and duration of phenological stages in plant and animal co­­­­mmunities on Tribal lands can provide insight to the direct impacts of climate change on culturally and economically significant Tribal resources . The project will leverage existing phenological observation protocols created by the USA-National Phenology Network and NEON to direct data collection efforts and will be tailored to the specific needs and concerns of the community. Phenology observations will be captured and managed within the Collaboratory

Wavelet-Based Peak Detection and a New Charge Inference Procedure for MS/MS Implemented in ProteoWizard’s msConvert

Science.gov (United States)

2015-01-01

We report the implementation of high-quality signal processing algorithms into ProteoWizard, an efficient, open-source software package designed for analyzing proteomics tandem mass spectrometry data. Specifically, a new wavelet-based peak-picker (CantWaiT) and a precursor charge determination algorithm (Turbocharger) have been implemented. These additions into ProteoWizard provide universal tools that are independent of vendor platform for tandem mass spectrometry analyses and have particular utility for intralaboratory studies requiring the advantages of different platforms convergent on a particular workflow or for interlaboratory investigations spanning multiple platforms. We compared results from these tools to those obtained using vendor and commercial software, finding that in all cases our algorithms resulted in a comparable number of identified peptides for simple and complex samples measured on Waters, Agilent, and AB SCIEX quadrupole time-of-flight and Thermo Q-Exactive mass spectrometers. The mass accuracy of matched precursor ions also compared favorably with vendor and commercial tools. Additionally, typical analysis runtimes (∼1–100 ms per MS/MS spectrum) were short enough to enable the practical use of these high-quality signal processing tools for large clinical and research data sets. PMID:25411686

Climate-based seed zones for Mexico: guiding reforestation under observed and projected climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Dante Castellanos-Acuña; Kenneth W. Vance-Borland; J. Bradley St. Clair; Andreas Hamann; Javier López-Upton; Erika Gómez-Pineda; Juan Manuel Ortega-Rodríguez; Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero

2018-01-01

Seed zones for forest tree species are a widely used tool in reforestation programs to ensure that seedlings are well adapted to their planting environments. Here, we propose a climate-based seed zone system for Mexico to address observed and projected climate change. The proposed seed zone classification is based on bands of climate variables often related to genetic...

Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Seungwon; Pan, Lei; Zhai, Chengxing; Tang, Benyang; Kubar, Terry; Zhang, Zia; Wang, Wei

2015-01-01

The comprehensive and innovative evaluation of climate models with newly available global observations is critically needed for the improvement of climate model current-state representation and future-state predictability. A climate model diagnostic evaluation process requires physics-based multi-variable analyses that typically involve large-volume and heterogeneous datasets, making them both computation- and data-intensive. With an exploratory nature of climate data analyses and an explosive growth of datasets and service tools, scientists are struggling to keep track of their datasets, tools, and execution/study history, let alone sharing them with others. In response, we have developed a cloud-enabled, provenance-supported, web-service system called Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer (CMDA). CMDA enables the physics-based, multivariable model performance evaluations and diagnoses through the comprehensive and synergistic use of multiple observational data, reanalysis data, and model outputs. At the same time, CMDA provides a crowd-sourcing space where scientists can organize their work efficiently and share their work with others. CMDA is empowered by many current state-of-the-art software packages in web service, provenance, and semantic search.

Evolving the US Climate Resilience Toolkit to Support a Climate-Smart Nation

Science.gov (United States)

Tilmes, C.; Niepold, F., III; Fox, J. F.; Herring, D.; Dahlman, L. E.; Hall, N.; Gardiner, N.

2015-12-01

Communities, businesses, resource managers, and decision-makers at all levels of government need information to understand and ameliorate climate-related risks. Likewise, climate information can expose latent opportunities. Moving from climate science to social and economic decisions raises complex questions about how to communicate the causes and impacts of climate variability and change; how to characterize and quantify vulnerabilities, risks, and opportunities faced by communities and businesses; and how to make and implement "win-win" adaptation plans at local, regional, and national scales. A broad coalition of federal agencies launched the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit (toolkit.climate.gov) in November 2014 to help our nation build resilience to climate-related extreme events. The site's primary audience is planners and decision makers in business, resource management, and government (at all levels) who seek science-based climate information and tools to help them in their near- and long-term planning. The Executive Office of the President assembled a task force of dozens of subject experts from across the 13 agencies of the U.S. Global Change Research Program to guide the site's development. The site's ongoing evolution is driven by feedback from the target audience. For example, based on feedback, climate projections will soon play a more prominent role in the site's "Climate Explorer" tool and case studies. The site's five-step adaptation planning process is being improved to better facilitate people getting started and to provide clear benchmarks for evaluating progress along the way. In this session, we will share lessons learned from a series of user engagements around the nation and evidence that the Toolkit couples climate information with actionable decision-making processes in ways that are helping Americans build resilience to climate-related stressors.

Firing Range Contaminants and Climate Change Tool: Spreadsheet User Instructions

Science.gov (United States)

2017-09-18

Chief, CEERD-EPR; Mr. Warren Lorenz was Branch Chief, CEERD-EP; and Dr. Elizabeth Ferguson, CEERD- EM -J was the Technical Director for Environmental...changes. 15. SUBJECT TERMS Bombing and gunnery ranges, Rifle-ranges, Pollutants, Soil pollution-- Climatic factors, Climatic changes 16. SECURITY

Case study applications of the BASINS climate assessment tool (CAT)

Science.gov (United States)

This EPA report will illustrate the application of different climate assessment capabilities within EPA’s BASINS modeling system for assessing a range of potential questions about the effects of climate change on streamflow and water quality in different watershed settings and us...

Integration of modern statistical tools for the analysis of climate extremes into the web-GIS “CLIMATE”

Science.gov (United States)

Ryazanova, A. A.; Okladnikov, I. G.; Gordov, E. P.

2017-11-01

The frequency of occurrence and magnitude of precipitation and temperature extreme events show positive trends in several geographical regions. These events must be analyzed and studied in order to better understand their impact on the environment, predict their occurrences, and mitigate their effects. For this purpose, we augmented web-GIS called “CLIMATE” to include a dedicated statistical package developed in the R language. The web-GIS “CLIMATE” is a software platform for cloud storage processing and visualization of distributed archives of spatial datasets. It is based on a combined use of web and GIS technologies with reliable procedures for searching, extracting, processing, and visualizing the spatial data archives. The system provides a set of thematic online tools for the complex analysis of current and future climate changes and their effects on the environment. The package includes new powerful methods of time-dependent statistics of extremes, quantile regression and copula approach for the detailed analysis of various climate extreme events. Specifically, the very promising copula approach allows obtaining the structural connections between the extremes and the various environmental characteristics. The new statistical methods integrated into the web-GIS “CLIMATE” can significantly facilitate and accelerate the complex analysis of climate extremes using only a desktop PC connected to the Internet.

Measuring Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Organizational Climate: Instrument Adaptation.

Science.gov (United States)

Boyd, Donald; Poghosyan, Lusine

2017-08-01

No tool exists measuring certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) organizational climate. The study's purpose is to adapt a validated tool to measure CRNA organizational climate. Content validity of the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist Organizational Climate Questionnaire (CRNA-OCQ) was established. Pilot testing was conducted to determine internal reliability consistency of the subscales. Experts rated the tool as content valid. The subscales had high internal consistency reliability (with respective Cronbach's alphas): CRNA-Anesthesiologist Relations (.753), CRNA-Physician Relations (.833), CRNA-Administration Relations (.895), Independent Practice (.830), Support for CRNA Practice (.683), and Professional Visibility (.772). Further refinement of the CRNA-OCQ is necessary. Measurement and assessment of CRNA organizational climate may produce evidence needed to improve provider and patient outcomes.

Hands-on Approach to Prepare Specialists in Climate Changes Modeling and Analysis Using an Information-Computational Web-GIS Portal "Climate"

Science.gov (United States)

Shulgina, T. M.; Gordova, Y. E.; Martynova, Y. V.

2014-12-01

A problem of making education relevant to the workplace tasks is a key problem of higher education in the professional field of environmental sciences. To answer this challenge several new courses for students of "Climatology" and "Meteorology" specialties were developed and implemented at the Tomsk State University, which comprises theoretical knowledge from up-to-date environmental sciences with computational tasks. To organize the educational process we use an open-source course management system Moodle (www.moodle.org). It gave us an opportunity to combine text and multimedia in a theoretical part of educational courses. The hands-on approach is realized through development of innovative trainings which are performed within the information-computational web GIS platform "Climate" (http://climate.scert.ru/). The platform has a set of tools and data bases allowing a researcher to perform climate changes analysis on the selected territory. The tools are also used for students' trainings, which contain practical tasks on climate modeling and climate changes assessment and analysis. Laboratory exercises are covering three topics: "Analysis of regional climate changes"; "Analysis of climate extreme indices on the regional scale"; and "Analysis of future climate". They designed to consolidate students' knowledge of discipline, to instill in them the skills to work independently with large amounts of geophysical data using modern processing and analysis tools of web-GIS platform "Climate" and to train them to present results obtained on laboratory work as reports with the statement of the problem, the results of calculations and logically justified conclusion. Thus, students are engaged in n the use of modern tools of the geophysical data analysis and it cultivates dynamic of their professional learning. The approach can help us to fill in this gap because it is the only approach that offers experience, increases students involvement, advance the use of modern

3rd Annual Earth System Grid Federation and 3rd Annual Earth System Grid Federation and Ultrascale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools Face-to-Face Meeting Report December 2013

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Williams, Dean N. [Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

2014-02-21

The climate and weather data science community gathered December 3–5, 2013, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, California, for the third annual Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) and Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UV-CDAT) Face-to-Face (F2F) Meeting, which was hosted by the Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Infrastructure for the European Network of Earth System Modelling, and the Australian Department of Education. Both ESGF and UV-CDAT are global collaborations designed to develop a new generation of open-source software infrastructure that provides distributed access and analysis to observed and simulated data from the climate and weather communities. The tools and infrastructure developed under these international multi-agency collaborations are critical to understanding extreme weather conditions and long-term climate change, while the F2F meetings help to build a stronger climate and weather data science community and stronger federated software infrastructure. The 2013 F2F meeting determined requirements for existing and impending national and international community projects; enhancements needed for data distribution, analysis, and visualization infrastructure; and standards and resources needed for better collaborations.

Extra-Tropical Cyclones at Climate Scales: Comparing Models to Observations

Science.gov (United States)

Tselioudis, G.; Bauer, M.; Rossow, W.

2009-04-01

Climate is often defined as the accumulation of weather, and weather is not the concern of climate models. Justification for this latter sentiment has long been hidden behind coarse model resolutions and blunt validation tools based on climatological maps. The spatial-temporal resolutions of today's climate models and observations are converging onto meteorological scales, however, which means that with the correct tools we can test the largely unproven assumption that climate model weather is correct enough that its accumulation results in a robust climate simulation. Towards this effort we introduce a new tool for extracting detailed cyclone statistics from observations and climate model output. These include the usual cyclone characteristics (centers, tracks), but also adaptive cyclone-centric composites. We have created a novel dataset, the MAP Climatology of Mid-latitude Storminess (MCMS), which provides a detailed 6 hourly assessment of the areas under the influence of mid-latitude cyclones, using a search algorithm that delimits the boundaries of each system from the outer-most closed SLP contour. Using this we then extract composites of cloud, radiation, and precipitation properties from sources such as ISCCP and GPCP to create a large comparative dataset for climate model validation. A demonstration of the potential usefulness of these tools in process-based climate model evaluation studies will be shown.

Integrating climate change considerations into forest management tools and training

Science.gov (United States)

Linda M. Nagel; Christopher W. Swanston; Maria K. Janowiak

2010-01-01

Silviculturists are currently facing the challenge of developing management strategies that meet broad ecological and social considerations in spite of a high degree of uncertainty in future climatic conditions. Forest managers need state-of-the-art knowledge about climate change and potential impacts to facilitate development of silvicultural objectives and...

A novel visualisation tool for climate services: a case study of temperature extremes and human mortality in Europe

Science.gov (United States)

Lowe, R.; Ballester, J.; Robine, J.; Herrmann, F. R.; Jupp, T. E.; Stephenson, D.; Rodó, X.

2013-12-01

Users of climate information often require probabilistic information on which to base their decisions. However, communicating information contained within a probabilistic forecast presents a challenge. In this paper we demonstrate a novel visualisation technique to display ternary probabilistic forecasts on a map in order to inform decision making. In this method, ternary probabilistic forecasts, which assign probabilities to a set of three outcomes (e.g. low, medium, and high risk), are considered as a point in a triangle of barycentric coordinates. This allows a unique colour to be assigned to each forecast from a continuum of colours defined on the triangle. Colour saturation increases with information gain relative to the reference forecast (i.e. the long term average). This provides additional information to decision makers compared with conventional methods used in seasonal climate forecasting, where one colour is used to represent one forecast category on a forecast map (e.g. red = ';dry'). We use the tool to present climate-related mortality projections across Europe. Temperature and humidity are related to human mortality via location-specific transfer functions, calculated using historical data. Daily mortality data at the NUTS2 level for 16 countries in Europe were obtain from 1998-2005. Transfer functions were calculated for 54 aggregations in Europe, defined using criteria related to population and climatological similarities. Aggregations are restricted to fall within political boundaries to avoid problems related to varying adaptation policies between countries. A statistical model is fit to cold and warm tails to estimate future mortality using forecast temperatures, in a Bayesian probabilistic framework. Using predefined categories of temperature-related mortality risk, we present maps of probabilistic projections for human mortality at seasonal to decadal time scales. We demonstrate the information gained from using this technique compared to more

Measuring School Climate: Using Existing Data Tools on Climate and Effectiveness to Inform School Organizational Health

Science.gov (United States)

Durham, Rachel E.; Bettencourt, Amie; Connolly, Faith

2014-01-01

Despite--or perhaps due to--the lack of consensus on its definition, there is abundant interest in and research on school climate. Researchers have determined that improving school climate is one way to increase academic achievement, school safety, school completion, teacher retention, healthy social interactions, and student well-being (Cohen,…

Mapping Climate Science Information Needs and Networks in the Northwest, USA through Evaluating the Northwest Climate Science Center Climate Science Digest

Science.gov (United States)

Gergel, D. R.; Watts, L. H.; Salathe, E. P.; Mankowski, J. D.

2017-12-01

Climate science, already a highly interdisciplinary field, is rapidly evolving, and natural resource managers are increasingly involved in policymaking and adaptation decisions to address climate change that need to be informed by state-of-the-art climate science. Consequently, there is a strong demand for unique organizations that engender collaboration and cooperation between government, non-profit, academic and for-profit sectors that are addressing issues relating to natural resources management and climate adaptation and resilience. These organizations are often referred to as boundary organizations. The Northwest Climate Science Center (NW CSC) and the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NP LCC) are two such boundary organizations operating in different contexts. Together, the NW CSC and the NP LCC fulfill the need for sites of co-production between researchers and managers working on climate-related issues, and a key component of this work is a monthly climate science newsletter that includes recent climate science journal articles, reports, and climate-related events. Our study evaluates the effectiveness of the climate science digest (CSD) through a three-pronged approach: a) in-depth interviews with natural resource managers who use the CSD, b) poll questions distributed to CSD subscribers, and c) quantitative analysis of CSD effectiveness using analytics from MailChimp distribution. We aim to a) map the reach of the CSD across the Northwest and at a national level; b) understand the efficacy of the CSD at communicating climate science to diverse audiences; c) evaluate the usefulness of CSD content for diverse constituencies of subscribers; d) glean transferrable knowledge for future evaluations of boundary management tools; and e) establish a protocol for designing climate science newsletters for other agencies disseminating climate science information. We will present results from all three steps of our evaluation process and describe

Pacific Islands Climate Change Virtual Library

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The Virtual Library provides access to web based climate variability and climate change information and tools relevant to the Pacific Islands including case studies,...

The importance of organizational climate and implementation strategy at the introduction of a new working tool in primary health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Carlfjord, S; Andersson, A; Nilsen, P; Bendtsen, P; Lindberg, M

2010-12-01

The transmission of research findings into routine care is a slow and unpredictable process. Important factors predicting receptivity for innovations within organizations have been identified, but there is a need for further research in this area. The aim of this study was to describe contextual factors and evaluate if organizational climate and implementation strategy influenced outcome, when a computer-based concept for lifestyle intervention was introduced in primary health care (PHC). The study was conducted using a prospective intervention design. The computer-based concept was implemented at six PHC units. Contextual factors in terms of size, leadership, organizational climate and political environment at the units included in the study were assessed before implementation. Organizational climate was measured using the Creative Climate Questionnaire (CCQ). Two different implementation strategies were used: one explicit strategy, based on Rogers' theories about the innovation-decision process, and one implicit strategy. After 6 months, implementation outcome in terms of the proportion of patients who had been referred to the test, was measured. The CCQ questionnaire response rates among staff ranged from 67% to 91% at the six units. Organizational climate differed substantially between the units. Managers scored higher on CCQ than staff at the same unit. A combination of high CCQ scores and explicit implementation strategy was associated with a positive implementation outcome. Organizational climate varies substantially between different PHC units. High CCQ scores in combination with an explicit implementation strategy predict a positive implementation outcome when a new working tool is introduced in PHC. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Quantitative approaches in climate change ecology

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brown, Christopher J.; Schoeman, David S.; Sydeman, William J.

2011-01-01

Contemporary impacts of anthropogenic climate change on ecosystems are increasingly being recognized. Documenting the extent of these impacts requires quantitative tools for analyses of ecological observations to distinguish climate impacts in noisy data and to understand interactions between...... climate variability and other drivers of change. To assist the development of reliable statistical approaches, we review the marine climate change literature and provide suggestions for quantitative approaches in climate change ecology. We compiled 267 peer‐reviewed articles that examined relationships...

Muggles in the Media World.

Science.gov (United States)

English, Nancy; Hanks, Ruth

2003-01-01

Considers the roles of teachers and school librarians in comparison to J. K. Rowling's muggles and wizards in the Harry Potter books. Presents a technology assessment tool that asks teachers what skills they would like the library to provide to support curriculum, including reference, technology, literacy, and collaborative learning, and provides…

Exploratory Climate Data Visualization and Analysis Using DV3D and UVCDAT

Science.gov (United States)

Maxwell, Thomas

2012-01-01

Earth system scientists are being inundated by an explosion of data generated by ever-increasing resolution in both global models and remote sensors. Advanced tools for accessing, analyzing, and visualizing very large and complex climate data are required to maintain rapid progress in Earth system research. To meet this need, NASA, in collaboration with the Ultra-scale Visualization Climate Data Analysis Tools (UVCOAT) consortium, is developing exploratory climate data analysis and visualization tools which provide data analysis capabilities for the Earth System Grid (ESG). This paper describes DV3D, a UV-COAT package that enables exploratory analysis of climate simulation and observation datasets. OV3D provides user-friendly interfaces for visualization and analysis of climate data at a level appropriate for scientists. It features workflow inte rfaces, interactive 40 data exploration, hyperwall and stereo visualization, automated provenance generation, and parallel task execution. DV30's integration with CDAT's climate data management system (COMS) and other climate data analysis tools provides a wide range of high performance climate data analysis operations. DV3D expands the scientists' toolbox by incorporating a suite of rich new exploratory visualization and analysis methods for addressing the complexity of climate datasets.

Climate economics in progress 2011; Climate economics in progress 2011

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

De Perthuis, Christian [Paris-Dauphine University (France); Jouvet, Pierre-Andre [Paris-Ouest University (France); Trotignon, Raphael; Simonet, Gabriela; Boutueil, Virginie [Climate Economics Chair, Paris-Dauphine University (France)

2011-10-01

Climate Economics in Progress offers a global overview of the present status of action on climate change. Drawing on the most recent data, it analyzes the development of carbon markets in Europe and other parts of the world. It also examines the conditions for including major players such as China and new sectors such as agriculture, forestry and transport in the fight against global warming. The book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand current advances in climate control, which could pave the way for a new form of economic growth. The book brings together a group of researchers whose goal is to make the link between academic research on the economics of climate change and the implementation of operational tools, thereby allowing the climate issue to be integrated into the functioning of the real economy

Arctic ecosystem responses to a warming climate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Mortensen, Lars O.

sheet, loss of multiannual sea-ice and significant advances in snowmelt days. The biotic components of the arctic ecosystem have also been affected by the rapid changes in climate, for instance resulting in the collapse of the collared lemming cycle, advances in spring flowering and changes in the intra...... biotic interactions. Hence, through the use of up-to-date multivariate statistical tools, this Ph.D. study has been concerned with analyzing how the observed rapid climate changes are affecting the arctic ecosystems. The primary tool has been the implementation of structural equation modeling (SEM) which....... Additionally, the study demonstrated that climate effects had distinct direct and indirect effects on different trophic levels, indicating cascading effects of climate through the trophic system. Results suggest that the Arctic is being significantly affected by the observed climate changes and depending...

Investigating Climate Change and Reproduction: Experimental Tools from Evolutionary Biology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oliver Y. Martin

2012-09-01

Full Text Available It is now generally acknowledged that climate change has wide-ranging biological consequences, potentially leading to impacts on biodiversity. Environmental factors can have diverse and often strong effects on reproduction, with obvious ramifications for population fitness. Nevertheless, reproductive traits are often neglected in conservation considerations. Focusing on animals, recent progress in sexual selection and sexual conflict research suggests that reproductive costs may pose an underestimated hurdle during rapid climate change, potentially lowering adaptive potential and increasing extinction risk of certain populations. Nevertheless, regime shifts may have both negative and positive effects on reproduction, so it is important to acquire detailed experimental data. We hence present an overview of the literature reporting short-term reproductive consequences of exposure to different environmental factors. From the enormous diversity of findings, we conclude that climate change research could benefit greatly from more coordinated efforts incorporating evolutionary approaches in order to obtain cross-comparable data on how individual and population reproductive fitness respond in the long term. Therefore, we propose ideas and methods concerning future efforts dealing with reproductive consequences of climate change, in particular by highlighting the advantages of multi-generational experimental evolution experiments.

Natural versus anthropogenic climate change: Swedish farmers' joint construction of climate perceptions.

Science.gov (United States)

Asplund, Therese

2016-07-01

While previous research into understandings of climate change has usually examined general public perceptions, this study offers an audience-specific departure point. This article analyses how Swedish farmers perceive climate change and how they jointly shape their understandings. The agricultural sector is of special interest because it both contributes to and is directly affected by climate change. Through focus group discussions with Swedish farmers, this study finds that (1) farmers relate to and understand climate change through their own experiences, (2) climate change is understood either as a natural process subject to little or no human influence or as anthropogenic and (3) various communication tools contribute to the formation of natural and anthropogenic climate change frames. The article ends by discussing frame resonance and frame clash in public understanding of climate change and by comparing potential similarities and differences in how various segments of the public make sense of climate change. © The Author(s) 2014.

A Web-Based Geovisual Analytical System for Climate Studies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhenlong Li

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Climate studies involve petabytes of spatiotemporal datasets that are produced and archived at distributed computing resources. Scientists need an intuitive and convenient tool to explore the distributed spatiotemporal data. Geovisual analytical tools have the potential to provide such an intuitive and convenient method for scientists to access climate data, discover the relationships between various climate parameters, and communicate the results across different research communities. However, implementing a geovisual analytical tool for complex climate data in a distributed environment poses several challenges. This paper reports our research and development of a web-based geovisual analytical system to support the analysis of climate data generated by climate model. Using the ModelE developed by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS as an example, we demonstrate that the system is able to (1 manage large volume datasets over the Internet; (2 visualize 2D/3D/4D spatiotemporal data; (3 broker various spatiotemporal statistical analyses for climate research; and (4 support interactive data analysis and knowledge discovery. This research also provides an example for managing, disseminating, and analyzing Big Data in the 21st century.

Uncertainty Analysis of Coupled Socioeconomic-Cropping Models: Building Confidence in Climate Change Decision-Support Tools for Local Stakeholders

Science.gov (United States)

Malard, J. J.; Rojas, M.; Adamowski, J. F.; Gálvez, J.; Tuy, H. A.; Melgar-Quiñonez, H.

2015-12-01

While cropping models represent the biophysical aspects of agricultural systems, system dynamics modelling offers the possibility of representing the socioeconomic (including social and cultural) aspects of these systems. The two types of models can then be coupled in order to include the socioeconomic dimensions of climate change adaptation in the predictions of cropping models.We develop a dynamically coupled socioeconomic-biophysical model of agricultural production and its repercussions on food security in two case studies from Guatemala (a market-based, intensive agricultural system and a low-input, subsistence crop-based system). Through the specification of the climate inputs to the cropping model, the impacts of climate change on the entire system can be analysed, and the participatory nature of the system dynamics model-building process, in which stakeholders from NGOs to local governmental extension workers were included, helps ensure local trust in and use of the model.However, the analysis of climate variability's impacts on agroecosystems includes uncertainty, especially in the case of joint physical-socioeconomic modelling, and the explicit representation of this uncertainty in the participatory development of the models is important to ensure appropriate use of the models by the end users. In addition, standard model calibration, validation, and uncertainty interval estimation techniques used for physically-based models are impractical in the case of socioeconomic modelling. We present a methodology for the calibration and uncertainty analysis of coupled biophysical (cropping) and system dynamics (socioeconomic) agricultural models, using survey data and expert input to calibrate and evaluate the uncertainty of the system dynamics as well as of the overall coupled model. This approach offers an important tool for local decision makers to evaluate the potential impacts of climate change and their feedbacks through the associated socioeconomic system.

Protecting Your Forest from Climate Change

Science.gov (United States)

Steven McNulty

2009-01-01

Climate change is already impacting our forests and the situation is ongoing. As a landowner, there are management tools that you can use to help reduce the likelihood that climate change will cause serious harm to your forest.

Climate Ready Estuaries

Science.gov (United States)

Information on climate change impacts to different estuary regions, tools and resources to monitor changes, and information to help managers develop adaptation plans for risk management of estuaries and coastal communities.

The Monash University Interactive Simple Climate Model

Science.gov (United States)

Dommenget, D.

2013-12-01

The Monash university interactive simple climate model is a web-based interface that allows students and the general public to explore the physical simulation of the climate system with a real global climate model. It is based on the Globally Resolved Energy Balance (GREB) model, which is a climate model published by Dommenget and Floeter [2011] in the international peer review science journal Climate Dynamics. The model simulates most of the main physical processes in the climate system in a very simplistic way and therefore allows very fast and simple climate model simulations on a normal PC computer. Despite its simplicity the model simulates the climate response to external forcings, such as doubling of the CO2 concentrations very realistically (similar to state of the art climate models). The Monash simple climate model web-interface allows you to study the results of more than a 2000 different model experiments in an interactive way and it allows you to study a number of tutorials on the interactions of physical processes in the climate system and solve some puzzles. By switching OFF/ON physical processes you can deconstruct the climate and learn how all the different processes interact to generate the observed climate and how the processes interact to generate the IPCC predicted climate change for anthropogenic CO2 increase. The presentation will illustrate how this web-base tool works and what are the possibilities in teaching students with this tool are.

Promoting climate literacy through social engagement: the Green Ninja Project

Science.gov (United States)

Cordero, E. C.; Todd, A.

2012-12-01

One of the challenges of communicating climate change to younger audiences is the disconnect between global issues and local impacts. The Green Ninja is a climate-action superhero that aims to energize young people about climate science through media and social engagement tools. In this presentation, we'll highlight two of the tools designed to help K-12 students implement appropriate local mitigation strategies. A mobile phone application builds and supports a social community around taking action at local businesses regarding themes such as food, packaging and energy efficiency. An energy efficiency contest in local schools utilizes smart meter technology to provide feedback on household energy use and conservation. These tools are supported by films and lesson plans that link formal and informal education channels. The effectiveness of these methodologies as tools to engage young people in climate science and action will be discussed.

Three Points Approach (3PA) for urban flood risk management: A tool to support climate change adaptation through transdisciplinarity and multifunctionality

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fratini, Chiara; Geldof, Govert Daan; Kluck, J.

2012-01-01

Urban flood risk is increasing as a consequence of climate change and growing impervious surfaces. Increasing complexity of the urban context, gradual loss of tacit knowledge and decreasing social awareness are at the same time leading to inadequate choices with respect to urban flood risk...... management (UFRM). The European Flood Risk Directive emphasises the need for non-structural measures aimed at urban resilience and social preparedness. The Three Points Approach (3PA) provides a structure facilitating the decision making processes dealing with UFRM. It helps to accept the complexity...... water managers and operators an efficient communication tool and thinking system, which helps to reduce complexity to a level suitable when organising strategy plans for UFRM and urban adaptation to climate change....

The climate4impact platform: Providing, tailoring and facilitating climate model data access

Science.gov (United States)

Pagé, Christian; Pagani, Andrea; Plieger, Maarten; Som de Cerff, Wim; Mihajlovski, Andrej; de Vreede, Ernst; Spinuso, Alessandro; Hutjes, Ronald; de Jong, Fokke; Bärring, Lars; Vega, Manuel; Cofiño, Antonio; d'Anca, Alessandro; Fiore, Sandro; Kolax, Michael

2017-04-01

One of the main objectives of climate4impact is to provide standardized web services and tools that are reusable in other portals. These services include web processing services, web coverage services and web mapping services (WPS, WCS and WMS). Tailored portals can be targeted to specific communities and/or countries/regions while making use of those services. Easier access to climate data is very important for the climate change impact communities. To fulfill this objective, the climate4impact (http://climate4impact.eu/) web portal and services has been developed, targeting climate change impact modellers, impact and adaptation consultants, as well as other experts using climate change data. It provides to users harmonized access to climate model data through tailored services. It features static and dynamic documentation, Use Cases and best practice examples, an advanced search interface, an integrated authentication and authorization system with the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF), a visualization interface with ADAGUC web mapping tools. In the latest version, statistical downscaling services, provided by the Santander Meteorology Group Downscaling Portal, were integrated. An innovative interface to integrate statistical downscaling services will be released in the upcoming version. The latter will be a big step in bridging the gap between climate scientists and the climate change impact communities. The climate4impact portal builds on the infrastructure of an international distributed database that has been set to disseminate the results from the global climate model results of the Coupled Model Intercomparison project Phase 5 (CMIP5). This database, the ESGF, is an international collaboration that develops, deploys and maintains software infrastructure for the management, dissemination, and analysis of climate model data. The European FP7 project IS-ENES, Infrastructure for the European Network for Earth System modelling, supports the European

SimilarityExplorer: A visual inter-comparison tool for multifaceted climate data

Science.gov (United States)

J. Poco; A. Dasgupta; Y. Wei; W. Hargrove; C. Schwalm; R. Cook; E. Bertini; C. Silva

2014-01-01

Inter-comparison and similarity analysis to gauge consensus among multiple simulation models is a critical visualization problem for understanding climate change patterns. Climate models, specifically, Terrestrial Biosphere Models (TBM) represent time and space variable ecosystem processes, for example, simulations of photosynthesis and respiration, using algorithms...

Catalog of Navy Training Courses (CANTRAC). Volume 1. Introductory General Information and Quota Control Notes.

Science.gov (United States)

1991-01-01

S-231-0040 Classic Wizard Tuner e. S-231-0001 Classic Wizard Collection System Operator f. S-231-0002 Classic Wizard Network System Operator g. S-231...aircraft. HKLM[ NERON 12 has its headquarters at NAS Norfolk. (1) Pilots and Aircrew Training: HEIMINERON TWELVE Training Officer Naval Air Station Norfolk

Water Budget Tool

Science.gov (United States)

If you're designing a new landscape or rethinking your current one, the WaterSense Water Budget Tool will tell you if you have designed a landscape that will use an appropriate amount of water for your climate.

Geospatial Analysis Tool Kit for Regional Climate Datasets (GATOR) : An Open-source Tool to Compute Climate Statistic GIS Layers from Argonne Climate Modeling Results

Science.gov (United States)

2017-08-01

This large repository of climate model results for North America (Wang and Kotamarthi 2013, 2014, 2015) is stored in Network Common Data Form (NetCDF...Network Common Data Form (NetCDF). UCAR/Unidata Program Center, Boulder, CO. Available at: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf. Accessed on 6/20...parametric approach. This introduces uncertainty, because the parametric models are only as good as the available observations that form the basis for

eSACP - a new Nordic initiative towards developing statistical climate services

Science.gov (United States)

Thorarinsdottir, Thordis; Thejll, Peter; Drews, Martin; Guttorp, Peter; Venälainen, Ari; Uotila, Petteri; Benestad, Rasmus; Mesquita, Michel d. S.; Madsen, Henrik; Fox Maule, Cathrine

2015-04-01

The Nordic research council NordForsk has recently announced its support for a new 3-year research initiative on "statistical analysis of climate projections" (eSACP). eSACP will focus on developing e-science tools and services based on statistical analysis of climate projections for the purpose of helping decision-makers and planners in the face of expected future challenges in regional climate change. The motivation behind the project is the growing recognition in our society that forecasts of future climate change is associated with various sources of uncertainty, and that any long-term planning and decision-making dependent on a changing climate must account for this. At the same time there is an obvious gap between scientists from different fields and between practitioners in terms of understanding how climate information relates to different parts of the "uncertainty cascade". In eSACP we will develop generic e-science tools and statistical climate services to facilitate the use of climate projections by decision-makers and scientists from all fields for climate impact analyses and for the development of robust adaptation strategies, which properly (in a statistical sense) account for the inherent uncertainty. The new tool will be publically available and include functionality to utilize the extensive and dynamically growing repositories of data and use state-of-the-art statistical techniques to quantify the uncertainty and innovative approaches to visualize the results. Such a tool will not only be valuable for future assessments and underpin the development of dedicated climate services, but will also assist the scientific community in making more clearly its case on the consequences of our changing climate to policy makers and the general public. The eSACP project is led by Thordis Thorarinsdottir, Norwegian Computing Center, and also includes the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, the Technical University of Denmark

Embedding complex hydrology in the climate system - towards fully coupled climate-hydrology models

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Butts, M.; Rasmussen, S.H.; Ridler, M.

2013-01-01

Motivated by the need to develop better tools to understand the impact of future management and climate change on water resources, we present a set of studies with the overall aim of developing a fully dynamic coupling between a comprehensive hydrological model, MIKE SHE, and a regional climate...... distributed parameters using satellite remote sensing. Secondly, field data are used to investigate the effects of model resolution and parameter scales for use in a coupled model. Finally, the development of the fully coupled climate-hydrology model is described and some of the challenges associated...... with coupling models for hydrological processes on sub-grid scales of the regional climate model are presented....

Modeling and evaluation tools for the indoor climate

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schijndel, van A.W.M.

2005-01-01

The appendix contains the paper presented at the 26TthAIVC Conference Brussels, 21-23 September 2005. The paper provides a study of the indoor climate of a monumental building with periodic high indoor moisture loads. Several scenarios of the past performance and new control classes are simulated

Climate Change Education in Earth System Science

Science.gov (United States)

Hänsel, Stephanie; Matschullat, Jörg

2013-04-01

The course "Atmospheric Research - Climate Change" is offered to master Earth System Science students within the specialisation "Climate and Environment" at the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg. This module takes a comprehensive approach to climate sciences, reaching from the natural sciences background of climate change via the social components of the issue to the statistical analysis of changes in climate parameters. The course aims at qualifying the students to structure the physical and chemical basics of the climate system including relevant feedbacks. The students can evaluate relevant drivers of climate variability and change on various temporal and spatial scales and can transform knowledge from climate history to the present and the future. Special focus is given to the assessment of uncertainties related to climate observations and projections as well as the specific challenges of extreme weather and climate events. At the end of the course the students are able to critically reflect and evaluate climate change related results of scientific studies and related issues in media. The course is divided into two parts - "Climate Change" and "Climate Data Analysis" and encompasses two lectures, one seminar and one exercise. The weekly "Climate change" lecture transmits the physical and chemical background for climate variation and change. (Pre)historical, observed and projected climate changes and their effects on various sectors are being introduced and discussed regarding their implications for society, economics, ecology and politics. The related seminar presents and discusses the multiple reasons for controversy in climate change issues, based on various texts. Students train the presentation of scientific content and the discussion of climate change aspects. The biweekly lecture on "Climate data analysis" introduces the most relevant statistical tools and methods in climate science. Starting with checking data quality via tools of exploratory

Exploring the Multifaceted Topic of Climate Change in Our Changing Climate and Living With Our Changing Climate

Science.gov (United States)

Brey, J. A.; Kauffman, C.; Geer, I. W.; Mills, E. W.; Nugnes, K. A.; Stimach, A. E.

2015-12-01

As the effects of climate change become more profound, climate literacy becomes increasingly important. The American Meteorological Society (AMS) responds to this need through the publication of Our Changing Climate and Living With Our Changing Climate. Both publications incorporate the latest scientific understandings of Earth's climate system from reports such as IPCC AR5 and the USGCRP's Third National Climate Assessment. Topic In Depth sections appear throughout each chapter and lead to more extensive, multidisciplinary information related to various topics. Additionally, each chapter closes with a For Further Exploration essay, which addresses specific topics that complement a chapter concept. Web Resources, which encourage additional exploration of chapter content, and Scientific Literature, from which chapter content was derived can also be found at the conclusion of each chapter. Our Changing Climate covers a breadth of topics, including the scientific principles that govern Earth's climate system and basic statistics and geospatial tools used to investigate the system. Released in fall 2015, Living With Our Changing Climate takes a more narrow approach and investigates human and ecosystem vulnerabilities to climate change, the role of energy choices in affecting climate, actions humans can take through adaption, mitigation, and policy to lessen vulnerabilities, and psychological and financial reasons behind climate change denial. While Living With Our Changing Climate is intended for programs looking to add a climate element into their curriculum, Our Changing Climate is part of the AMS Climate Studies course. In a 2015 survey of California University of Pennsylvania undergraduate students using Our Changing Climate, 82% found it comfortable to read and utilized its interactive components and resources. Both ebooks illuminate the multidisciplinary aspect of climate change, providing the opportunity for a more sustainable future.

Cyberlearning for Climate Literacy: Challenges and Opportunities

Science.gov (United States)

McCaffrey, M. S.; Buhr, S. M.; Gold, A. U.; Ledley, T. S.; Mooney, M. E.; Niepold, F.

2010-12-01

Cyberlearning tools provide cost and carbon-efficient avenues for fostering a climate literate society through online engagement with learners. With climate change education becoming a Presidential Priority in 2009, funding for grants from NSF, NASA and NOAA is leading to a new generation of cyberlearning resources that supplement existing online resources. This paper provides an overview of challenges and opportunities relating to the online delivery of high quality, often complex climate science by examining several existing and emerging efforts, including the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN,) a National Science Digital Library Pathway, the development by CIRES Education and Outreach of the Inspiring Climate Education Excellence (ICEE) online course, TERC’s Earth Exploration Toolbook (EET,) DataTools, and EarthLab modules, the NOAA Climate Stewards Education Program (CSEP) that utilizes the NSTA E-Learning Center, online efforts by members of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), UCAR’s Climate Discovery program, and the Climate Adaptation, Mitigation e-Learning (CAMeL) project. In addition, we will summarize outcomes of the Cyberlearning for Climate Literacy workshop held in Washington DC in the Fall of 2009 and examine opportunities for teachers to develop and share their own lesson plans based on climate-related web resources that currently lack built-in learning activities, assessments or teaching tips.

The DEDUCE Guided Query tool: providing simplified access to clinical data for research and quality improvement.

Science.gov (United States)

Horvath, Monica M; Winfield, Stephanie; Evans, Steve; Slopek, Steve; Shang, Howard; Ferranti, Jeffrey

2011-04-01

In many healthcare organizations, comparative effectiveness research and quality improvement (QI) investigations are hampered by a lack of access to data created as a byproduct of patient care. Data collection often hinges upon either manual chart review or ad hoc requests to technical experts who support legacy clinical systems. In order to facilitate this needed capacity for data exploration at our institution (Duke University Health System), we have designed and deployed a robust Web application for cohort identification and data extraction--the Duke Enterprise Data Unified Content Explorer (DEDUCE). DEDUCE is envisioned as a simple, web-based environment that allows investigators access to administrative, financial, and clinical information generated during patient care. By using business intelligence tools to create a view into Duke Medicine's enterprise data warehouse, DEDUCE provides a Guided Query functionality using a wizard-like interface that lets users filter through millions of clinical records, explore aggregate reports, and, export extracts. Researchers and QI specialists can obtain detailed patient- and observation-level extracts without needing to understand structured query language or the underlying database model. Developers designing such tools must devote sufficient training and develop application safeguards to ensure that patient-centered clinical researchers understand when observation-level extracts should be used. This may mitigate the risk of data being misunderstood and consequently used in an improper fashion. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Forest adaptation resources: Climate change tools and approaches for land managers

Science.gov (United States)

Chris Swanston; Maria, eds. Janowiak

2012-01-01

The forests of northern Wisconsin, a defining feature of the region's landscape, are expected to undergo numerous changes in response to the changing climate. This document provides a collection of resources designed to help forest managers incorporate climate change considerations into management and devise adaptation tactics. It was developed in northern...

DengueTools: innovative tools and strategies for the surveillance and control of dengue.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilder-Smith, Annelies; Renhorn, Karl-Erik; Tissera, Hasitha; Abu Bakar, Sazaly; Alphey, Luke; Kittayapong, Pattamaporn; Lindsay, Steve; Logan, James; Hatz, Christoph; Reiter, Paul; Rocklöv, Joacim; Byass, Peter; Louis, Valérie R; Tozan, Yesim; Massad, Eduardo; Tenorio, Antonio; Lagneau, Christophe; L'Ambert, Grégory; Brooks, David; Wegerdt, Johannah; Gubler, Duane

2012-01-01

Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease estimated to cause about 230 million infections worldwide every year, of which 25,000 are fatal. Global incidence has risen rapidly in recent decades with some 3.6 billion people, over half of the world's population, now at risk, mainly in urban centres of the tropics and subtropics. Demographic and societal changes, in particular urbanization, globalization, and increased international travel, are major contributors to the rise in incidence and geographic expansion of dengue infections. Major research gaps continue to hamper the control of dengue. The European Commission launched a call under the 7th Framework Programme with the title of 'Comprehensive control of Dengue fever under changing climatic conditions'. Fourteen partners from several countries in Europe, Asia, and South America formed a consortium named 'DengueTools' to respond to the call to achieve better diagnosis, surveillance, prevention, and predictive models and improve our understanding of the spread of dengue to previously uninfected regions (including Europe) in the context of globalization and climate change.The consortium comprises 12 work packages to address a set of research questions in three areas:Research area 1: Develop a comprehensive early warning and surveillance system that has predictive capability for epidemic dengue and benefits from novel tools for laboratory diagnosis and vector monitoring.Research area 2: Develop novel strategies to prevent dengue in children.Research area 3: Understand and predict the risk of global spread of dengue, in particular the risk of introduction and establishment in Europe, within the context of parameters of vectorial capacity, global mobility, and climate change.In this paper, we report on the rationale and specific study objectives of 'DengueTools'. DengueTools is funded under the Health theme of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community, Grant Agreement Number: 282589 Dengue Tools.

Complexity in Climate Change Manipulation Experiments

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kreyling, Juergen; Beier, Claus

2014-01-01

Climate change goes beyond gradual changes in mean conditions. It involves increased variability in climatic drivers and increased frequency and intensity of extreme events. Climate manipulation experiments are one major tool to explore the ecological impacts of climate change. Until now...... variability in temperature are ecologically important. Embracing complexity in future climate change experiments in general is therefore crucial......., precipitation experiments have dealt with temporal variability or extreme events, such as drought, resulting in a multitude of approaches and scenarios with limited comparability among studies. Temperature manipulations have mainly been focused only on warming, resulting in better comparability among studies...

Policy Case Study – Food Labelling: Climate for Sustainable Growth

OpenAIRE

Cosbey, Aaron; Marcu, Andrei; Belis, David; Stoefs, Wijnand; Tuokko, Katja

2015-01-01

This study, which is part of the project entitled “Climate for Sustainable Growth“, focuses on one particular policy tool used in the agricultural sector, food labelling. It reviews food carbon labelling when put in place with clear objectives to address climate change. This study examines whether food carbon labels, as climate mitigation tools, are put in place in a sustainable way, by identifying their impacts on the three dimensions of sustainable development: 1) economic 2) social and ...

Developing Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change in the New York City Infrastructure-Shed: Process, Approach, Tools, and Strategies

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenzweig, Cynthia; Solecki, William D.; Blake, Reginald; Bowman, Malcolm; Faris, Craig; Gornitz, Vivien; Horton, Radley; Jacob, Klaus; LeBlanc, Alice; Leichenko, Robin;

Ultrascale Visualization of Climate Data

Science.gov (United States)

Williams, Dean N.; Bremer, Timo; Doutriaux, Charles; Patchett, John; Williams, Sean; Shipman, Galen; Miller, Ross; Pugmire, David R.; Smith, Brian; Steed, Chad;

Youth Climate Summits: Empowering & Engaging Youth to Lead on Climate Change

Science.gov (United States)

Kretser, J.

2017-12-01

The Wild Center's Youth Climate Summits is a program that engages youth in climate literacy from knowledge and understanding to developing action in their schools and communities. Each Youth Climate Summit is a one to three day event that brings students and teachers together to learn about climate change science, impacts and solutions at a global and local level. Through speakers, workshops and activities, the Summit culminates in a student-driven Climate Action Plan that can be brought back to schools and communities. The summits have been found to be powerful vehicles for inspiration, learning, community engagement and youth leadership development. Climate literacy with a focus on local climate impacts and solutions is a key component of the Youth Climate Summit. The project-based learning surrounding the creation of a unique, student driven, sustainability and Climate Action Plan promotes leadership skills applicable and the tools necessary for a 21st Century workforce. Student driven projects range from school gardens and school energy audits to working with NYS officials to commit to going 100% renewable electricty at the three state-owned downhill ski facilities. The summit model has been scaled and replicated in other communities in New York State, Vermont, Ohio, Michigan and Washington states as well as internationally in Finland, Germany and Sri Lanka.

assessing climate change impacts on river hydrology

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

71

model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), in order to evaluate the effect of climate. 24 change on rainfall ... to project future climate data based on the CO2 emission scenarios.The RCMs are of finer ..... Springer Science+Business. 2.

Innovative Instructional Tools from the AMS

Science.gov (United States)

Abshire, W. E.; Geer, I. W.; Mills, E. W.; Nugnes, K. A.; Stimach, A. E.

2016-12-01

Since 1996, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) has been developing online educational materials with dynamic features that engage students and encourage additional exploration of various concepts. Most recently, AMS transitioned its etextbooks to webBooks. Now accessible anywhere with internet access, webBooks can be read with any web browser. Prior versions of AMS etextbooks were difficult to use in a lab setting, however webBooks are much easier to use and no longer a hurdle to learning. Additionally, AMS eInvestigations Manuals, also in webBook format, include labs with innovative features and educational tools. One such example is the AMS Climate at a Glance (CAG) app that draws data from NOAA's Climate at a Glance website. The user selects historical data of a given parameter and the app calculates various statistics revealing whether or not the results are consistent with climate change. These results allow users to distinguish between climate variability and climate change. This can be done for hundreds of locations across the U.S. and on multiple time scales. Another innovative educational tool used in AMS eInvestigations Manuals is the AMS Conceptual Climate Energy Model (CCEM). The CCEM is a computer simulation designed to enable users to track the paths that units of energy might follow as they enter, move through and exit an imaginary system according to simple rules applied to different scenarios. The purpose is to provide insight into the impacts of physical processes that operate in the real world. Finally, AMS educational materials take advantage of Google Earth imagery to reproduce the physical aspects of globes, allowing users to investigate spatial relationships in three dimensions. Google Earth imagery is used to explore tides, ocean bottom bathymetry and El Nino and La Nina. AMS will continue to develop innovative educational materials and tools as technology advances, to attract more students to the Earth sciences.

Recognizing and exploring the right questions with climate data: An example of better understanding ENSO in climate projections

Science.gov (United States)

Ammann, C. M.; Brown, B.; Kalb, C. P.; Bullock, R.; Buja, L.; Gutowski, W. J., Jr.; Halley-Gotway, J.; Kaatz, L.; Yates, D. N.

2017-12-01

Coordinated, multi-model climate change projection archives have already led to a flourishing of new climate impact applications. Collections and online tools for the computation of derived indicators have attracted many non-specialist users and decision-makers and facilitated for them the exploration of potential future weather and climate changes on their systems. Guided by a set of standardized steps and analyses, many can now use model output and determine basic model-based changes. But because each application and decision-context is different, the question remains if such a small collection of standardized tools can faithfully and comprehensively represent the critical physical context of change? We use the example of the El Niño - Southern Oscillation, the largest and most broadly recognized mode of variability in the climate system, to explore the difference in impact contexts between a quasi-blind, protocol-bound and a flexible, scientifically guided use of climate information. More use oriented diagnostics of the model-data as well as different strategies for getting data into decision environments are explored.

Climate consoles: Pieces in the puzzle of climate change adaptation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dominique Bachelet

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Conservation Biology Institute (CBI has been developing web applications to centralize and serve credible and usable information that allows natural resource managers, as well as the general public, to better understand the challenges posed by on-going environmental change. In particular CBI has designed a series of climate consoles that provide natural resource managers the most recent 5th Climate Model Intercomparison Program (CMIP5 climate projections, landscape intactness, and soil sensitivity for a series of reporting units over the western United States. The publically available web sites were refined based on feedback from a variety of users. In this paper, we describe each of the tools developed as open-source applications and provide details of their infrastructure in the hope they can be used and possibly modified by a wider audience. They were designed to be used as stepping-stones towards planning effective climate change adaptation strategies.

Climate wise case study compendium: Report 1

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1997-02-01

This case study compendium is one of several Climate Wise tools available to help interested companies identify cost-effective options. Climate Wise, a private-public partnership program, is a key Federal initiative to return greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

Using a map-based assesment tool for the development of cost-effective WFD river basin action programmes in a changing climate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kaspersen, Bjarke Stoltze; Vammen Jacobsen, Torsten; Brian Butts, Michael

2016-01-01

For the 2nd and 3rd river basin management cycles (2015–2027) of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), EU Member States are required to fully integrate climate change into the process of river basin management planning (RBMP). Complying with the main WFD objective of achieving ‘good ecological...... Basin in the north east of Denmark. The tool facilitates assessments of the application of agri-environmental measures that are targeted towards low retention agricultural areas, where limited or no surface and subsurface N reduction takes place. Effects of climate change on nitrate leaching were...... evaluated using the dynamic agro-ecosystem model ‘Daisy’. Results show that nitrate leaching rates increase by approx. 25% under current management practices. This impact outweighs the expected total N reduction effect of Baseline 2015 and the first RBMP in the case study river basin. The particular Po...

Design tools

Science.gov (United States)

Anton TenWolde; Mark T. Bomberg

2009-01-01

Overall, despite the lack of exact input data, the use of design tools, including models, is much superior to the simple following of rules of thumbs, and a moisture analysis should be standard procedure for any building envelope design. Exceptions can only be made for buildings in the same climate, similar occupancy, and similar envelope construction. This chapter...

U.S. Climate Normals Product Suite (1981-2010)

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The NOAA Climate Normals are a large suite of data products that provide users with many tools to understand typical climate conditions for thousands of locations...

Strategy for Climate Change Adaptation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Torben Valdbjørn

2013-01-01

. This absence of an agreement calls for adaptation to climate change. Emphasis should be put on buildings, as they play a vital economic and social role in society and are vulnerable to climate change. Therefore, the building stock deserves its own policy and implementation plans as well as tools that enable...... adequate and cost-efficient adaptation to climate change. This paper explains the need for climate change adaptation of the building stock and suggests a pattern for a strategic approach to how to reach the climate change adaptation needed. The suggested and presented need of a strategic approach is based...... on three main initiatives consisting of the need to examine the potential impacts of climate change on the building stock, the need to assess and develop a roadmap of current and future adaptation measures that can withstand the effects of climate change, and the need to engage relevant stakeholders...

Strategy for Climate Change Adaptation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Torben Valdbjørn

2014-01-01

. This absence of an agreement calls for adaptation to climate change. Emphasis should be put on buildings, as they play a vital economic and social role in society and are vulnerable to climate change. Therefore, the building stock deserves its own policy and implementation plans as well as tools that enable...... adequate and cost-efficient adaptation to climate change. This paper explains the need for climate change adaptation of the building stock and suggests a pattern for a strategic approach to how to reach the climate change adaptation needed. The suggested and presented need of a strategic approach is based...... on three main initiatives consisting of the need to examine the potential impacts of climate change on the building stock, the need to assess and develop a roadmap of current and future adaptation measures that can withstand the effects of climate change, and the need to engage relevant stakeholders...

Past climate reconstruction: a tool for assessing site suitability

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Potter, G.

1978-01-01

Reconstructing past climatic variations can lead to a better understanding of possible future precipitation and groundwater recharge patterns. Work so far has led to several new insights into past climate variability and will provide input into the hydrologic modeling effort in progress for the Waste Management Program. Short-term reconstructions (0 to 350 y) suggest that the basin and range of the southwestern United States have the driest, least variable precipitation record. The Pacific Northwest shows higher variability and several trends lasting for more then 25 y. The Southern High Plains have even more variability, but the upper Midwest and Southwest vary most and have the highest precipitation amounts. Pollen and lake level data from the literature suggest that the Southwest was wetter during at least part of the last glacial maximum than it is today

Climate-responsive design : A framework for an energy concept design-decision support tool for architects using principles of climate-responsive design

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Looman, R.H.J.

2017-01-01

In climate-responsive design the building becomes an intermediary in its own energy housekeeping, forming a link between the harvest of climate resources and low-energy provision of comfort. Essential here is the employment of climate-responsive building elements; structural and architectural

U.S. Annual/Seasonal Climate Normals (1981-2010)

Data.gov (United States)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce — The U.S. Annual Climate Normals for 1981 to 2010 are 30-year averages of meteorological parameters that provide users with many tools to understand typical climate...

Climate forecasts for corn producer decision making

Science.gov (United States)

Corn is the most widely grown crop in the Americas, with annual production in the United States of approximately 332 million metric tons. Improved climate forecasts, together with climate-related decision tools for corn producers based on these improved forecasts, could substantially reduce uncertai...

Toward an Ethical Framework for Climate Services

Science.gov (United States)

Wilby, R.; Adams, P.; Eitland, E.; Hewitson, B.; Shumake, J.; Vaughan, C.; Zebiak, S. E.

2015-12-01

Climate services offer information and tools to help stakeholders anticipate and/or manage risks posed by climate change. However, climate services lack a cohesive ethical framework to govern their development and application. This paper describes a prototype, open-ended process to form a set of ethical principles to ensure that climate services are effectively deployed to manage climate risks, realize opportunities, and advance human security.We begin by acknowledging the multiplicity of competing interests and motivations across individuals and institutions. Growing awareness of potential climate impacts has raised interest and investments in climate services and led to the entrance of new providers. User demand for climate services is also rising, as are calls for new types of services. Meanwhile, there is growing pressure from funders to operationalize climate research.Our proposed ethical framework applies reference points founded on diverse experiences in western and developing countries, fundamental and applied climate research, different sectors, gender, and professional practice (academia, private sector, government). We assert that climate service providers should be accountable for both their practices and products by upholding values of integrity, transparency, humility, and collaboration.Principles of practice include: communicating all value judgements; eschewing climate change as a singular threat; engaging in the co-exploration of knowledge; establishing mechanisms for monitoring/evaluating procedures and products; declaring any conflicts of interest. Examples of principles of products include: clear and defensible provenance of information; descriptions of the extent and character of uncertainties using terms that are meaningful to intended users; tools and information that are tailored to the context of the user; and thorough documentation of methods and meta-data.We invite the community to test and refine these points.

Climate change adaptation impact cost assessment in France. Second phase report. September 2009

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2009-01-01

Firstly, this report presents the context and challenges of works dealing with climate change adaptation assessment: observations and perspectives of climate change, concepts and definitions of adaptation to climate change, adaptation within national, European and international context, objectives and organisation of the France's inter-departmental Group. It describes the chosen methodology: hypothesis, methodological tools (climate model), bibliographical tool, and heat wave counting methodology. It discusses the present results, outlines the encountered difficulties and discusses the perspectives for future work

Adaptation to Climate change Impacts on the Mediterranean islands' Agriculture (ADAPT2CLIMA)

Science.gov (United States)

Giannakopoulos, Christos; Karali, Anna; Lemesios, Giannis; Loizidou, Maria; Papadaskalopoulou, Christina; Moustakas, Konstantinos; Papadopoulou, Maria; Moriondo, Marco; Markou, Marinos; Hatziyanni, Eleni; Pasotti, Luigi

2016-04-01

Agriculture is one of the economic sectors that will likely be hit hardest by climate change, since it directly depends on climatic factors such as temperature, sunlight, and precipitation. The EU LIFE ADAPT2CLIMA (http://adapt2clima.eu/en/) project aims to facilitate the development of adaptation strategies for agriculture by deploying and demonstrating an innovative decision support tool. The ADAPT2CLIMA tool will make it possible to simulate the impacts of climate change on crop production and the effectiveness of selected adaptation options in decreasing vulnerability to climate change in three Mediterranean islands, namely Crete (Greece), Sicily (Italy), and Cyprus. The islands were selected for two reasons: firstly, they figure among the most important cultivation areas at national level. Secondly, they exhibit similarities in terms of location (climate), size, climate change threats faced (coastal agriculture, own water resources), agricultural practices, and policy relevance. In particular, the tool will provide: i) climate change projections; ii) hydrological conditions related to agriculture: iii) a vulnerability assessment of selected crops; iv) an evaluation of the adaptation options identified. The project is expected to contribute significantly to increasing climate resilience of agriculture areas in Sicily, Cyprus and Crete as well as at EU and international level by: • Developing, implementing and demonstrating an innovative and interactive decision support tool (ADAPT2CLIMA tool) for adaptation planning in agriculture that estimates future climate change impacts on local water resources, as well as the climate change vulnerability of the agricultural crop production in the project areas; • Evaluating the technical and economic viability of the implementation of the ADAPT2CLIMA tool; • Developing climate change adaptation strategies for agriculture (including a monitoring plan) for the three project areas and presenting them to the competent

Better predictions, better allocations: scientific advances and adaptation to climate change.

Science.gov (United States)

Freeman, Mark C; Groom, Ben; Zeckhauser, Richard J

2015-11-28

Climate science initially aspired to improve understanding of what the future would bring, and thereby produce appropriate public policies and effective international climate agreements. If that hope is dashed, as now seems probable, effective policies for adapting to climate change become critical. Climate science assumes new responsibilities by helping to foster more appropriate adaptation measures, which might include shifting modes or locales of production. This theoretical article focuses on two broader tools: consumption smoothing in response to the risk of future losses, and physical adaptation measures to reduce potential damages. It shows that informative signals on the effects of climate change facilitate better decisions on the use of each tool, thereby increasing social welfare. © 2015 The Author(s).

Climate-conscious architecture. Design and wind testing method for climates in change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kuismanen, K.

2008-07-01

The main objective of this research was to develop practical tools with which it is possible to improve the environment, micro-climate and energy economy of buildings and plans in different climate zones, and take the climate change into account. The parts of the study are: State of art study into existing know-how about climate and planning. Study of the effects of climate change on the built environment. Development of simple micro-climate, nature and built environment analysis methods. Defining the criteria of an acceptable micro-climatic environment. Development of the wind test blower. Presenting ways to interpret test results and draw conclusions. Development of planning and design guidelines for different climate zones. An important part of the research is the development of the CASE wind test instrument, different wind simulation techniques, and the methods of observing the results. Bioclimatic planning and architectural design guidelines for different climate zones are produced. The analyse tools developed give a qualitative overall view, which can be deepened towards a quantitative analyse with wind testing measurements and roughness calculations. No mechanical rules are suggested, but complementary viewpoints and practices introduced to a normal planning process as well as improvement of consultative knowledge. The 'method' is that there is no strict mechanical method, but a deeper understanding of bioclimatic matters. Climate-conscious planning with the developed CASE method, make it possible to design a better micro-climate for new or old built-up areas. Winds can be used in to ventilate exhaust fumes and other pollutants, which improves the quality of air and the healthiness of the urban environment. The analyses and scale-model tests make it possible to shield cold windy areas and to diminish the cooling effect of wind on facades. According to studies in Scandinavian countries this will bring energy savings of 5-15 per cent. The method can

Geospatial climate monitoring products: Tools for food security assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Verdin, James Patrick

Many of the 250 million people living in the drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa are food insecure---they lack access at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life. Their vulnerability is due in large measure to highly variable climatic conditions and a dependence on rainfed agriculture. Famine, the most extreme food security emergency, is caused by crop failure due to bad weather, conflict, or both. Famine is a slow onset disaster, culminating after two or more bad growing seasons. After the disastrous African famines of the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. established the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) to make the observations of climatic and socioeconomic variables needed for early detection of food security emergencies. Two geospatial climate monitoring products, rainfall estimate and vegetation index images derived from satellite data, are operationally used by FEWS analysts. This dissertation describes research to derive new products from them to reduce ambiguity and improve the link between early warning and early response. First, rainfall estimate images were used in a geospatial crop water accounting scheme. The resulting water requirement satisfaction index was used to estimate crop yield, and a correlation of 0.80 with conventional yield reports was obtained for the 1997 maize harvest in Zimbabwe. Thus, the agricultural significance of remotely sensed patterns of precipitation in time and space was made more clear. The second product tested was the expression of a seasonal climate forecast as a series of vegetation index anomaly images. Correlations between sea surface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific and vegetation index anomalies in Southern Africa were established and predictive relationships cross-validated. Using model forecast values of Pacific sea surface temperature from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for January, February, and March, forecast images of vegetation index anomalies were prepared prior to the

Chemistry and climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bernier, Jean-Claude; Brasseur, Guy; Brechet, Yves; Candel, Sebastien; Cazenave, Anny; Courtillot, Vincent; Fontecave, Marc; Garnier, Emmanuel; Goebel, Philippe; Legrand, Jack; Legrand, Michel; Le Treut, Herve; Mauberger, Pascal; Dinh-Audouin, Minh-Thu; Olivier, Daniele; Rigny, Paul; Bigot, Bernard

2016-01-01

In its first part, this collective publication addresses the decennial and centuries-old variations of climate: perspectives and implications of climate change for the 21. century, questions remaining about the understanding of climate change from its sources to its modelling, extreme climate variations and societies during the last millennium. The contributions of the second part outline how chemistry is a tool to study climate change: ice chemistry as an archive of our past environment, observations and predictions on sea level rise, relationship between atmosphere chemistry and climate. The third set of contributions discusses the transformation of the energy system for a cleaner atmosphere and the management of the climate risk: the chemical processing of CO_2, actions of chemical companies to support the struggle against climate change, relationship between barrel price and renewable energies, relationship between grid complexity and green energy. The last part outlines the role chemistry can have to be able to do without fossil fuels: chemistry in front of challenges of transformation of the energy system, the use of micro-algae, the use of hydrogen as a vector of energy transition

Applying "Climate" system to teaching basic climatology and raising public awareness of climate change issues

Science.gov (United States)

Gordova, Yulia; Okladnikov, Igor; Titov, Alexander; Gordov, Evgeny

2016-04-01

While there is a strong demand for innovation in digital learning, available training programs in the environmental sciences have no time to adapt to rapid changes in the domain content. A joint group of scientists and university teachers develops and implements an educational environment for new learning experiences in basics of climatic science and its applications. This so-called virtual learning laboratory "Climate" contains educational materials and interactive training courses developed to provide undergraduate and graduate students with profound understanding of changes in regional climate and environment. The main feature of this Laboratory is that students perform their computational tasks on climate modeling and evaluation and assessment of climate change using the typical tools of the "Climate" information-computational system, which are usually used by real-life practitioners performing such kind of research. Students have an opportunity to perform computational laboratory works using information-computational tools of the system and improve skills of their usage simultaneously with mastering the subject. We did not create an artificial learning environment to pass the trainings. On the contrary, the main purpose of association of the educational block and computational information system was to familiarize students with the real existing technologies for monitoring and analysis of data on the state of the climate. Trainings are based on technologies and procedures which are typical for Earth system sciences. Educational courses are designed to permit students to conduct their own investigations of ongoing and future climate changes in a manner that is essentially identical to the techniques used by national and international climate research organizations. All trainings are supported by lectures, devoted to the basic aspects of modern climatology, including analysis of current climate change and its possible impacts ensuring effective links between

Statistically downscaled climate projections to support evaluating climate change risks for hydropower

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Brekke, L.

2008-01-01

This paper described a web-served public access archive of down-scaled climate projections developed as a tool for water managers of river and hydropower systems. The archive provided access to climate projection data at basin-relevant resolution and included an extensive compilation of down-scale climate projects designed to support risk-based adaptation planning. Downscaled translations of 112 contemporary climate projections produced using the World Climate Research Program's coupled model intercomparison project were also included. Datasets for the coupled model included temperature and precipitation, monthly time-steps, and geographic coverage for the United States and portions of Mexico and Canada. It was concluded that the archive will be used to develop risk-based studies on shifts in seasonal patterns, changes in mean annual runoff, and associated responses in water resources and hydroelectric power management. Case studies demonstrating reclamation applications of archive content and potential applications for hydroelectric power production impacts were included. tabs., figs

Simulation modelling and risk assessment as tools to identify the impact of climate change on microbiological food safety – The case study of fresh produce supply chain

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jacxsens, L.; Luning, P.A.; Vorst, van der J.G.A.J.; Devlieghere, F.; Leemans, R.; Uyttendaele, M.

2010-01-01

The current quality assurance and control tools and methods to prevent and/or to control microbiological risks associated with fresh produce are challenged due to the following pressures upon the food supply chain, i.e. changing consumption patterns, globalization and climate change. It demonstrates

Generating relevant climate adaptation science tools in concert with local natural resource agencies

Science.gov (United States)

Micheli, L.; Flint, L. E.; Veloz, S.; Heller, N. E.

2015-12-01

To create a framework for adapting to climate change, decision makers operating at the urban-wildland interface need to define climate vulnerabilities in the context of site-specific opportunities and constraints relative to water supply, land use suitability, wildfire risks, ecosystem services and quality of life. Pepperwood's TBC3.org is crafting customized climate vulnerability assessments with selected water and natural resource agencies of California's Sonoma, Marin, Napa and Mendocino counties under the auspices of Climate Ready North Bay, a public-private partnership funded by the California Coastal Conservancy. Working directly with managers from the very start of the process to define resource-specific information needs, we are developing high-resolution, spatially-explicit data products to help local governments and agency staff implement informed and effective climate adaptation strategies. Key preliminary findings for the region using the USGS' Basin Characterization Model (at a 270 m spatial resolution) include a unidirectional trend, independent of greater or lesser precipitation, towards increasing climatic water deficits across model scenarios. Therefore a key message is that managers will be facing an increasingly arid environment. Companion models translate the impacts of shifting climate and hydrology on vegetation composition and fire risks. The combination of drought stress on water supplies and native vegetation with an approximate doubling of fire risks may demand new approaches to watershed planning. Working with agencies we are exploring how to build capacity for protection and enhancement of key watershed functions with a focus on groundwater recharge, facilitating greater drought tolerance in forest and rangeland systems, and considering more aggressive approaches to management of fuel loads. Lessons learned about effective engagement include the need for extended in-depth dialog, translation of key climate adaptation questions into

Climate change. Managing the risks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Swart, R.J.

1994-01-01

In order to address the key question if a targeted approach to climate change response is feasible, different aspects of this question are analyzed. First, the scientific and political aspects of different options to determine specific long-term objectives for climate change are evaluated on the basis of the current scientific insights and the experiences over the last 5 years to develop climate objectives. Preliminary directions for such objectives are given. Next, important analytical tools are discussed that can be applied to analyze the different options and their implications in detail. In order to evaluate the implications of mitigation options, strategies that are consistent with the preliminary climate goals are analyzed in the third part. In chapter 2, the concept of long-term environmental goals, derived from critical levels of climate change, is discussed. Also a historical perspective is provided. A new, systematic regionalized and risk-based approach to elaborate the ultimate objective of the Framework Convention on Climate Change is proposed. In chapter 3 scenarios and integrated models are discussed. Central is the description of scenarios that were developed with RlVM's Integrated Model to Assess the Greenhouse Effect (IMAGE) and the US-EPA's Atmospheric Stabilization Framework (ASF). In chapter 4 potential long-term international emissions control strategies for the different sources and sinks of the most important greenhouse gases are analyzed. Carbon dioxide from energy, carbon dioxide from deforestation, and non-CO 2 greenhouse gases are dealt with subsequently. The dissertation ends with general conclusions and recommendations for the further design of a targeted approach to climate change response, the development of analytical tools to support policy development in the area of climate change, and strategies that are consistent with preliminary long-term environmental goals. 66 figs., 8 tabs., 417 refs., 1 appendix

Climate politics in the Lower Mekong Basin. National interests and transboundary cooperation on climate change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Baadsgaard Lange, R.; Moerck Jensen, K.

2013-09-01

Climate change is expected to intensify water security concerns in international river basins. UNFCCC and DAC-donors have been important generators of political attention to the climate agenda among governments in the Mekong Basin in relation to regional cooperation, national policy-making and capacity building. However, the formal commitment to climate action is not necessarily reflected in the everyday business of development. In this paper we use a political economy approach to understand when and how climate change becomes a political priority for the governments of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, and for transboundary cooperation. Uneven distribution of climate hazards and vulnerabilities create different national risk perceptions and commitment to climate action. Donor funding and national development strategies are also strong drivers of climate action and inaction. Climate change is sometimes used as a scapegoat for domestic policy failures and as a tool to acquire donor funding. We recommend prioritizing climate action in the context of immediate development challenges and 'no regrets' interventions that are likely to enhance adaptive capacity and governments' commitment. (Author)

School Climate: Historical Review, Instrument Development, and School Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Zullig, Keith J.; Koopman, Tommy M.; Patton, Jon M.; Ubbes, Valerie A.

2010-01-01

This study's purpose is to examine the existing school climate literature in an attempt to constitute its definition from a historical context and to create a valid and reliable student-reported school climate instrument. Five historically common school climate domains and five measurement tools were identified, combined, and previewed by the…

Climate News Across Media Platforms

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Eskjær, Mikkel Fugl

2015-01-01

In a changing media landscape marked by technological, institutional and cultural convergence, comparative and cross-media content analysis represents a valuable analytical tool in mapping the diverse channels of climate change communication. This paper presents a comparative study of climate...... quantitative and qualitative content analysis the paper documents and explores the extent and character of climate change news across different media platforms. The study aims at contributing to the on-going assessment of how news media are addressing climate change at a time when old and new media...... change news on five different media platforms: newspapers, television, radio, web-news and mobile news. It investigates the themes and actors represented in public climate change communication as well as the diverse possibilities of participating in public debates and information sharing. By combining...

Acting against climate change, the French know-how

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2014-10-01

This publication aims at presenting for international purposes the French public and private know-how in the field of struggle against climate change and of decision-making tools. It first recalls the various international commitments (international mobilisation within the IPCC, United Nations, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC, the Kyoto protocol) and proposes an overview of the UE policy. The next part outlines the role of France as host of the COP21, and the French policy and its territorial declinations. It proposes an overview of the French global offer to meet climate challenges: a table indicates actions and actors in the fields of diagnosis, elaboration of action plans, monitoring and assessment, labelling, capacity development. An article presents the 'Monitoring, Reporting and Verification' (MRV) principle and the different arrangements, bodies and actors addressing these assessment issues, with a focus of methods of assessments of greenhouse gas emissions (standards and methods have been developed in France and are evoked). Various tools applicable in different sectors are also indicated, and the exportation of abilities regarding energy-climate diagnosis is outlined. The next part addresses methods, tools and publications addressing the diagnosis of consequences of climate change. The structure, content and approach of Territorial Climate Energy Plans (PCET) is presented and commented. The next parts show how French companies are mobilised to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, give an overview of public and private initiatives for adaptation to climate change, describe how energy-climate approaches are monitored and assessed, comment how French local communities act at an international level through decentralised cooperation, and indicate how French know-how is developed and can be exported in the field of education and training of actors

Our Changing Climate: A Brand New Way to Study Climate Science

Science.gov (United States)

Brey, J. A.; Kauffman, C.; Geer, I.; Nugnes, K. A.; Mills, E. W.

2014-12-01

Earth's climate is inherently variable, but is currently changing at rates unprecedented in recent Earth history. Human activity plays a major role in this change and is projected to do so well into the future. This is the stance taken in Our Changing Climate, the brand new climate science ebook from the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Our Changing Climate investigates Earth's climate system, explores humans' impact on it, and identifies actions needed in response to climate change. Released in August 2014, Our Changing Climate is the result of a year's worth of intensive research and writing, incorporating the latest scientific understandings of Earth's climate system from reports such as IPCC AR5 and the Third National Climate Assessment. To encourage additional exploration of climate science information, scientific literature, from which chapter content was derived, is cited at the conclusion of each chapter. In addition, Topic In Depth sections appear throughout each chapter and lead to more extensive information related to various topics. For example, a Topic In Depth in Chapter 11 describes the effect of climate extremes on ranching enterprises in Nebraska. Climate science is multi-disciplinary and therefore Our Changing Climate covers a breadth of topics. From understanding basic statistics and geospatial tools used to investigate Earth's climate system to examining the psychological and financial reasons behind climate change denial, the AMS believes that a multi-disciplinary approach is the most effective way to increase climate literacy. Our Changing Climate is part of the AMS Climate Studies course which is intended for undergraduate-level students. Other course materials include an eInvestigations Manual and access to the RealTime Climate Portal, both of which provide weekly activities corresponding to that week's chapter content. The RealTime Climate Portal also has links to climate data as well as societal interactions and climate policy

DTU climate change technologies. Recommendations on accelerated development and deployment of climate change technologies

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Larsen, Hans; Halsnaes, K [Technical Univ. of Denmark, Risoe National Lab. for Sustainable Energy, System Analysis Div., Roskilde (Denmark); Nielsen, Niels Axel; Moeller, J S; Hansen, Jakob Fritz; Froekjaer Strand, I [Technical Univ. of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby (Denmark)

2009-09-15

During 2009, the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has held a number of international workshops for climate change. Participants came from industry, research institutions and government. The workshops focused on sustainable energy systems and climate change adaptation. The summary of conclusions and recommendations from the workshops constitutes a comprehensive set of technology tracks and recommended actions towards accelerated development and deployment of technology within these two key areas. The workshop process has led to three main conclusions. A. Radical changes are needed to develop sustainable energy systems. B. Tools and processes that climate-proof societal planning and management are needed in order to adapt to climate change. C. Partnerships concerning innovation and deployment (research, development and deployment) are required to meet time constraints.

NOAA's Regional Climate Services Program: Building Relationships with Partners and Customers to Deliver Trusted Climate Information at Usable Scales

Science.gov (United States)

Mecray, E. L.; Dissen, J.

2016-12-01

Federal agencies across multiple sectors from transportation to health, emergency management and agriculture, are now requiring their key stakeholders to identify and plan for climate-related impacts. Responding to the drumbeat for climate services at the regional and local scale, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) formed its Regional Climate Services (RCS) program to include Regional Climate Services Directors (RCSD), Regional Climate Centers, and state climatologists in a partnership. Since 2010, the RCS program has engaged customers across the country and amongst many of the nation's key economic sectors to compile information requirements, deliver climate-related products and services, and build partnerships among federal agencies and their regional climate entities. The talk will include a sketch from the Eastern Region that may shed light on the interaction of the multiple entities working at the regional scale. Additionally, we will show examples of our interagency work with the Department of Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and others in NOAA to deliver usable and trusted climate information and resources. These include webinars, print material, and face-to-face customer engagements to gather and respond to information requirements. NOAA/National Centers for Environmental Information's RCSDs work on-the-ground to learn from customers about their information needs and their use of existing tools and resources. As regional leads, the RCSDs work within NOAA and with our regional partners to ensure the customer receives a broad picture of the tools and information from across the nation.

Persuasive Conversational Agent with Persuasion Tactics

Science.gov (United States)

Narita, Tatsuya; Kitamura, Yasuhiko

Persuasive conversational agents persuade people to change their attitudes or behaviors through conversation, and are expected to be applied as virtual sales clerks in e-shopping sites. As an approach to create such an agent, we have developed a learning agent with the Wizard of Oz method in which a person called Wizard talks to the user pretending to be the agent. The agent observes the conversations between the Wizard and the user, and learns how to persuade people. In this method, the Wizard has to reply to most of the user's inputs at the beginning, but the burden gradually falls because the agent learns how to reply as the conversation model grows.

Targeting climate diversity in conservation planning to build resilience to climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Heller, Nicole E.; Kreitler, Jason R.; Ackerly, David; Weiss, Stuart; Recinos, Amanda; Branciforte, Ryan; Flint, Lorraine E.; Flint, Alan L.; Micheli, Elisabeth

2015-01-01

Climate change is raising challenging concerns for systematic conservation planning. Are methods based on the current spatial patterns of biodiversity effective given long-term climate change? Some conservation scientists argue that planning should focus on protecting the abiotic diversity in the landscape, which drives patterns of biological diversity, rather than focusing on the distribution of focal species, which shift in response to climate change. Climate is one important abiotic driver of biodiversity patterns, as different climates host different biological communities and genetic pools. We propose conservation networks that capture the full range of climatic diversity in a region will improve the resilience of biotic communities to climate change compared to networks that do not. In this study we used historical and future hydro-climate projections from the high resolution Basin Characterization Model to explore the utility of directly targeting climatic diversity in planning. Using the spatial planning tool, Marxan, we designed conservation networks to capture the diversity of climate types, at the regional and sub-regional scale, and compared them to networks we designed to capture the diversity of vegetation types. By focusing on the Conservation Lands Network (CLN) of the San Francisco Bay Area as a real-world case study, we compared the potential resilience of networks by examining two factors: the range of climate space captured, and climatic stability to 18 future climates, reflecting different emission scenarios and global climate models. We found that the climate-based network planned at the sub-regional scale captured a greater range of climate space and showed higher climatic stability than the vegetation and regional based-networks. At the same time, differences among network scenarios are small relative to the variance in climate stability across global climate models. Across different projected futures, topographically heterogeneous areas

Research on Climate and Dengue in Malaysia: A Systematic Review

OpenAIRE

Hii, Yien Ling; Zaki, Rafdzah Ahmad; Aghamohammadi, Nasrin; Rockl?v, Joacim

2016-01-01

Background & Objectives Dengue is a climate-sensitive infectious disease. Climate-based dengue early warning may be a simple, low-cost, and effective tool for enhancing surveillance and control. Scientific studies on climate and dengue in local context form the basis for advancing the development of a climate-based early warning system. This study aims to review the current status of scientific studies in climate and dengue and the prospect or challenges of such research on a climate-based de...

Improved National Response to Climate Change: Aligning USGCRP reports and the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit

Science.gov (United States)

Lipschultz, F.; Dahlman, L. E.; Herring, D.; Fox, J. F.

2017-12-01

As part of an effort to coordinate production and distribution of scientific climate information across the U.S. Government, and to spur adaptation actions across the nation, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has worked to better integrate the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit (CRT) and its Climate Explorer (CE) tool into USGCRP activities and products. Much of the initial CRT content was based on the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3). The opportunity to integrate current development of NCA4—scheduled for release in late 2018—with CRT and CE can enhance all three projects and result in a useable and "living" NCA that is part of USGCRP's approach to sustained climate assessment. To coordinate this work, a USGCRP-led science team worked with CRT staff and CE developers to update the set of climate projections displayed in the CE tool. In concert with the USGCRP scenarios effort, the combined team selected the Localized Constructed Analogs (LOCA) dataset for the updated version of CE, based on its capabilities for capturing climate extremes and local climate variations. The team identified 28 variables from the LOCA dataset for display in the CE; many of these variables will also be used in USGCRP reports. In CRT engagements, communities with vulnerable assets have expressed a high value for the ability to integrate climate data available through the CE with data related to non-climate stressors in their locations. Moving forward, the teams intend to serve climate information needs at additional spatial scales by making NCA4 content available via CE's capability for dynamic interaction with climate-relevant datasets. This will permit users to customize the extent of data they access for decision-making, starting with the static NCA4 report. Additionally, NCA4 case studies and other content can be linked to more in-depth content within the CRT site. This capability will enable more frequent content updates than can be managed with quadrennial

Health Aspects of Climate Change in Cities with Mediterranean Climate, and Local Adaptation Plans.

Science.gov (United States)

Paz, Shlomit; Negev, Maya; Clermont, Alexandra; Green, Manfred S

2016-04-21

Cities with a Mediterranean-type climate (Med-cities) are particularly susceptible to health risks from climate change since they are located in biogeographical hot-spots that experience some of the strongest effects of the changing climate. The study aims to highlight health impacts of climate change in Med-cities, analyze local climate adaptation plans and make adaptation policy recommendations for the Med-city level. We identified five Med-cities with a climate change adaptation plan: Adelaide, Barcelona, Cape Town, Los Angeles and Santiago. Beyond their similar Med-climate features (although Santiago's are slightly different), the cities have different socio-economic characteristics in various aspects. We analyzed each plan according to how it addresses climate change-related drivers of health impacts among city dwellers. For each driver, we identified the types of policy adaptation tools that address it in the urban climate adaptation plans. The surveyed cities address most of the fundamental climate change-related drivers of risks to human health, including rising temperatures, flooding and drought, but the policy measures to reduce negative impacts vary across cities. We suggest recommendations for Med-cities in various aspects, depending on their local needs and vulnerability challenges: assessment of health risks, extreme events management and long-term adaptation, among others.

Application software for new BEPC interlock system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tang Shuming; Na Xiangyin; Chen Jiansong; Yu Yulan

1997-01-01

New BEPC (Beijing electron Positron collider) interlock system has been built in order to improve the reliability of personnel safety and interlock functions. Moreover, the system updates BEPC operation message once every 6 seconds, which are displayed on TV screens at the major entrances. Since March of 1996, new BEPC interlock system has been operating reliably. The hardware of the system is based on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC). A multimedia IBM/PC-586 as the host computer of the PLCs, monitors the PLC system via serial port COM2. The PC communicates with the central computer VAX-4500 of BEPC control system and gets operating massage of the accelerator through serial port COM3. The application software on the host computer has been developed. Visual C++ for MS-Windows 3.2 TM is selected as the work bench. It provides nice tools for building programs, such as APP STUDIO, CLASS WIZARD, APP WIZARD and debugger tool. The author describes the design idea and the structure of the application software. Error tolerance is taken into consideration. The author also presents a small database and its data structure for the application

The IS-ENES climate4impact portal: bridging the CMIP5 and CORDEX data to impact users

Science.gov (United States)

Som de Cerff, Wim; Plieger, Maarten; Page, Christian; Tatarinova, Natalia; Hutjes, Ronald; de Jong, Fokke; Bärring, Lars; Sjökvist, Elin; Vega Saldarriaga, Manuel; Santiago Cofiño Gonzalez, Antonio

2015-04-01

The aim of climate4impact (climate4impact.eu) is to enhance the use of Climate Research Data and to enhance the interaction with climate effect/impact communities. The portal is based on 17 impact use cases from 5 different European countries, and is evaluated by a user panel consisting of use case owners. It has been developed within the IS-ENES European project and is currently operated and further developed in the IS ENES2 project. As the climate impact community is very broad, the focus is mainly on the scientific impact community. Climate4impact is connected to the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) nodes containing global climate model data (GCM data) from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) and regional climate model data (RCM) data from the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX). This global network of climate model data centers offers services for data description, discovery and download. The climate4impact portal connects to these services using OpenID, and offers a user interface for searching, visualizing and downloading global climate model data and more. A challenging task is to describe the available model data and how it can be used. The portal informs users about possible caveats when using climate model data. All impact use cases are described in the documentation section, using highlighted keywords pointing to detailed information in the glossary. Climate4impact currently has two main objectives. The first one is to work on a web interface which automatically generates a graphical user interface on WPS endpoints. The WPS calculates climate indices and subset data using OpenClimateGIS/icclim on data stored in ESGF data nodes. Data is then transmitted from ESGF nodes over secured OpenDAP and becomes available in a new, per user, secured OpenDAP server. The results can then be visualized again using ADAGUC WMS. Dedicated wizards for processing of climate indices will be developed in close

Adapting to Teach Climate Literacy

Science.gov (United States)

Wilkening, B.; Schwartz, K. L.

2017-12-01

Adaptation is a key strategy to deal with the effects of climate change, and it can also be a key strategy in teaching climate literacy. Adapting curriculum to include utilizing new instructional practices, modifying existing lessons, evaluating evidence and engaging students in real-world projects are strategies employed in Recharge the Rain. Arizona Project WET and Watershed Management Group developed the Recharge the Rain project, through a NOAA Environmental Literacy Grant, to build community resiliency to hazards associated with increased temperatures, drought and flooding in Arizona. Sixth through twelfth grade teachers, students and the public will move through a continuum from awareness, to knowledge gain, to conceptual understanding, to action. During the first year of the project, through professional development and ongoing guidance, teachers developed a climate literacy curriculum to use in their classrooms. Using systems thinking language and structure from the Cabrera Research Labs, teachers and students gain the thinking tools necessary to increase understanding of Earth's climate system. Lessons and resources for teaching about climate change are abundant and many, such as those on the Climate Literacy Education Awareness Network (CLEAN), have gone through an extensive review process. By cataloguing online resources and sharing these with teachers through a social bookmarking tool, wakelet.com, teachers are easily able to find appropriate teaching material. Engaging students in evaluating evidence requires the data to be relevant to their everyday lives. Online data resources are readily available from NOAA and other sources at both the global and local levels. When teachers, students and the public contribute to the data collection process in citizen science projects such as CoCoRaHS, iSeeChange, and USA National Phenology Network, the data empowers them to act in ways to mitigate the climate threats in their community. Adapting to teach climate

The Data Platform for Climate Research and Action: Introducing Climate Watch

Science.gov (United States)

Hennig, R. J.; Ge, M.; Friedrich, J.; Lebling, K.; Carlock, G.; Arcipowska, A.; Mangan, E.; Biru, H.; Tankou, A.; Chaudhury, M.

2017-12-01

The Paris Agreement, adopted through Decision 1/CP.21, brings all nations together to take on ambitious efforts to combat climate change. Open access to climate data supporting climate research, advancing knowledge, and informing decision making is key to encourage and strengthen efforts of stakeholders at all levels to address and respond to effects of climate change. Climate Watch is a robust online data platform developed in response to the urgent needs of knowledge and tools to empower climate research and action, including those of researchers, policy makers, the private sector, civil society, and all other non-state actors. Building on the rapid growing technology of open data and information sharing, Climate Watch is equipped with extensive amount of climate data, informative visualizations, concise yet efficient user interface, and connection to resources users need to gather insightful information on national and global progress towards delivering on the objective of the Convention and the Paris Agreement. Climate Watch brings together hundreds of quantitative and qualitative indicators for easy explore, visualize, compare, download at global, national, and sectoral levels: Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for more than 190 countries over the1850-2014 time period, covering all seven Kyoto Gases following IPCC source/sink categories; Structured information on over 150 NDCs facilitating the clarity, understanding and transparency of countries' contributions to address climate change; Over 6500 identified linkages between climate actions in NDCs across the 169 targets of the sustainable development goals (SDG); Over 200 indicators describing low carbon pathways from models and scenarios by integrated assessment models (IAMs) and national sources; and Data on vulnerability and risk, policies, finance, and many more. Climate Watch platform is developed as part of the broader efforts within the World Resources Institute, the NDC Partnership, and in collaboration

Preparing suitable climate scenario data to assess impacts on local food safety

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Liu, C.; Hofstra, N.; Leemans, R.

2015-01-01

Quantification of climate change impacts on food safety requires food safety assessment with different past and future climate scenario data to compare current and future conditions. This study presents a tool to prepare climate and climate change data for local food safety scenario analysis and

Decision-Support System for Urban Air Pollution under Future Climate Conditions

OpenAIRE

Jensen , Steen ,; Brandt , Jørgen; Hvidberg , Martin; Ketzel , Matthias; Hedegaard , Gitte ,; Christensen , Jens ,

2011-01-01

Part 6: Climate Services and Environmental Tools for Urban Planning and Climate Change Applications and Services; International audience; Climate change is expected to influence urban living conditions and challenge the ability of cities to adapt to and mitigate climate change. Urban climates will be faced with elevated temperatures and future climate conditions are expected to cause higher ozone concentrations, increased biogenic emissions from vegetation, changes in the chemistry of the atm...

Climate economics in progress 2011

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

De Perthuis, Christian; Jouvet, Pierre-Andre; Trotignon, Raphael; Simonet, Gabriela; Boutueil, Virginie

2011-01-01

Climate Economics in Progress offers a global overview of the present status of action on climate change. Drawing on the most recent data, it analyzes the development of carbon markets in Europe and other parts of the world. It also examines the conditions for including major players such as China and new sectors such as agriculture, forestry and transport in the fight against global warming. The book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand current advances in climate control, which could pave the way for a new form of economic growth. The book brings together a group of researchers whose goal is to make the link between academic research on the economics of climate change and the implementation of operational tools, thereby allowing the climate issue to be integrated into the functioning of the real economy

Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture and Water ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Articles de revue. On the development of climate data visualization tool for interpretation of empirical results from climate model : does it add value to different stakeholders? ... L'Initiative des conseils subventionnaires de la recherche scientifique en Afrique subsaharienne remporte le prix de la diplomatie scientifique.

Using Web GIS "Climate" for Adaptation to Climate Change

Science.gov (United States)

Gordova, Yulia; Martynova, Yulia; Shulgina, Tamara

2015-04-01

A work is devoted to the application of an information-computational Web GIS "Climate" developed by joint team of the Institute of Monitoring of Climatic and Ecological Systems SB RAS and Tomsk State University to raise awareness about current and future climate change as a basis for further adaptation. Web-GIS "Climate» (http://climate.scert.ru/) based on modern concepts of Web 2.0 provides opportunities to study regional climate change and its consequences by providing access to climate and weather models, a large set of geophysical data and means of processing and visualization. Also, the system is used for the joint development of software applications by distributed research teams, research based on these applications and undergraduate and graduate students training. In addition, the system capabilities allow creating information resources to raise public awareness about climate change, its causes and consequences, which is a necessary step for the subsequent adaptation to these changes. Basic information course on climate change is placed in the public domain and is aimed at local population. Basic concepts and problems of modern climate change and its possible consequences are set out and illustrated in accessible language. Particular attention is paid to regional climate changes. In addition to the information part, the course also includes a selection of links to popular science network resources on current issues in Earth Sciences and a number of practical tasks to consolidate the material. These tasks are performed for a particular territory. Within the tasks users need to analyze the prepared within the "Climate" map layers and answer questions of direct interest to the public: "How did the minimum value of winter temperatures change in your area?", "What are the dynamics of maximum summer temperatures?", etc. Carrying out the analysis of the dynamics of climate change contributes to a better understanding of climate processes and further adaptation

Challenges of climate change. Which climate governance?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vieillefosse, A.; Cros, Ch.

2007-01-01

This report deals with the main challenges of climate change, and attempts to answer some questions: what is the temperature increase foreseen by scientific experts? Who will be affected by the consequences of climate change? Are there technologies to reduce emissions? If yes, why are they not diffused? Is it justified to ask developing countries to do something? Are concurrence distortions a real problem? Which are the main sectors where emissions are to be reduced? Are tools developed at the international level efficient? What is the present assessment for the clean development mechanism? What can be thought of technological partnerships developed with the United States? Then, the report comments the present status of international discussions, proposes a brief assessment of the Kyoto protocol ten years after its implementation, and proposes some improvement pathways

OpenClimateGIS - A Web Service Providing Climate Model Data in Commonly Used Geospatial Formats

Science.gov (United States)

Erickson, T. A.; Koziol, B. W.; Rood, R. B.

2011-12-01

The goal of the OpenClimateGIS project is to make climate model datasets readily available in commonly used, modern geospatial formats used by GIS software, browser-based mapping tools, and virtual globes.The climate modeling community typically stores climate data in multidimensional gridded formats capable of efficiently storing large volumes of data (such as netCDF, grib) while the geospatial community typically uses flexible vector and raster formats that are capable of storing small volumes of data (relative to the multidimensional gridded formats). OpenClimateGIS seeks to address this difference in data formats by clipping climate data to user-specified vector geometries (i.e. areas of interest) and translating the gridded data on-the-fly into multiple vector formats. The OpenClimateGIS system does not store climate data archives locally, but rather works in conjunction with external climate archives that expose climate data via the OPeNDAP protocol. OpenClimateGIS provides a RESTful API web service for accessing climate data resources via HTTP, allowing a wide range of applications to access the climate data.The OpenClimateGIS system has been developed using open source development practices and the source code is publicly available. The project integrates libraries from several other open source projects (including Django, PostGIS, numpy, Shapely, and netcdf4-python).OpenClimateGIS development is supported by a grant from NOAA's Climate Program Office.

Mainstreaming Climate Change: Recent and Ongoing Efforts to Understand, Improve, and Expand Consideration of Climate Change in Federal Water Resources Planning

Science.gov (United States)

Ferguson, I. M.; McGuire, M.; Broman, D.; Gangopadhyay, S.

2017-12-01

The Bureau of Reclamation is a Federal agency tasked with developing and managing water supply and hydropower projects in the Western U.S. Climate and hydrologic variability and change significantly impact management actions and outcomes across Reclamation's programs and initiatives, including water resource planning and operations, infrastructure design and maintenance, hydropower generation, and ecosystem restoration, among others. Planning, design, and implementation of these programs therefore requires consideration of future climate and hydrologic conditions will impact program objectives. Over the past decade, Reclamation and other Federal agencies have adopted new guidelines, directives, and mandates that require consideration of climate change in water resources planning and decision making. Meanwhile, the scientific community has developed a large number of climate projections, along with an array of models, methods, and tools to facilitate consideration of climate projections in planning and decision making. However, water resources engineers, planners, and decision makers continue to face challenges regarding how best to use the available data and tools to support major decisions, including decisions regarding infrastructure investments and long-term operating criteria. This presentation will discuss recent and ongoing research towards understanding, improving, and expanding consideration of climate projections and related uncertainties in Federal water resources planning and decision making. These research efforts address a variety of challenges, including: How to choose between available climate projection datasets and related methods, models, and tools—many of which are considered experimental or research tools? How to select an appropriate decision framework when design or operating alternatives may differ between climate scenarios? How to effectively communicate results of a climate impacts analysis to decision makers? And, how to improve

Climate change in high definition : scenarios for impacts and adaptation research : conference proceedings

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2007-01-01

This conference provided a forum to review information and tools to conduct climate change impact and adaptation research and assessments. The research community, policy advisors and resource managers reviewed the latest advancements in global and regional climate modeling, climate scenarios, downscaling tools and application of scenarios for decision-making. The new Climate Change Scenarios Network (CCSN) website was also launched at this meeting, which also provided training in Environment Canada's new statistical downscaling tool developed in collaboration with the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Eau, Terre et Environnement (INRS-ETE). New features of the CCSN were presented along with examples of how information from the network can be applied in specific cases, including assessments of impacts in areas such as human health and water resources. A training session on downscaling with the newly developed Automated Statistical Downscaling (ASD) tool was also provided. The conference featured 19 presentations, of which 3 have been catalogued separately for inclusion in this database. refs., tabs., figs

Marine sediment cores database for the Mediterranean Basin: a tool for past climatic and environmental studies

Science.gov (United States)

Alberico, I.; Giliberti, I.; Insinga, D. D.; Petrosino, P.; Vallefuoco, M.; Lirer, F.; Bonomo, S.; Cascella, A.; Anzalone, E.; Barra, R.; Marsella, E.; Ferraro, L.

2017-06-01

Paleoclimatic data are essential for fingerprinting the climate of the earth before the advent of modern recording instruments. They enable us to recognize past climatic events and predict future trends. Within this framework, a conceptual and logical model was drawn to physically implement a paleoclimatic database named WDB-Paleo that includes the paleoclimatic proxies data of marine sediment cores of the Mediterranean Basin. Twenty entities were defined to record four main categories of data: a) the features of oceanographic cruises and cores (metadata); b) the presence/absence of paleoclimatic proxies pulled from about 200 scientific papers; c) the quantitative analysis of planktonic and benthonic foraminifera, pollen, calcareous nannoplankton, magnetic susceptibility, stable isotopes, radionuclides values of about 14 cores recovered by Institute for Coastal Marine Environment (IAMC) of Italian National Research Council (CNR) in the framework of several past research projects; d) specific entities recording quantitative data on δ18O, AMS 14C (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) and tephra layers available in scientific papers. Published data concerning paleoclimatic proxies in the Mediterranean Basin are recorded only for 400 out of 6000 cores retrieved in the area and they show a very irregular geographical distribution. Moreover, the data availability decreases when a constrained time interval is investigated or more than one proxy is required. We present three applications of WDB-Paleo for the Younger Dryas (YD) paleoclimatic event at Mediterranean scale and point out the potentiality of this tool for integrated stratigraphy studies.

Propositions of measures for the Climate plan 2003; Propositions de mesures pour le plan climat 2003

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2003-06-01

In the framework of the PNLCC (national plan for the fight against the climatic change), the ''Plan Climat'' constitutes an operational and pragmatic tool for the measures application. The Climate Action network (RAC) precise in this document its point of view and its wishes for the ''Plan Climat'' in the energy sector, the transportation sector, the industry and fluoride gases sector, the construction sector, the wastes sector, the agriculture and forests sector, the local collectivities sector and the information and communication sector. For each sector, measures and actions are proposed, some need to be apply immediately, other are new ideas which are not pointed out in the PNLCC. (A.L.B.)

Climate Literacy and Cyberlearning: Emerging Platforms and Programs

Science.gov (United States)

McCaffrey, M. S.; Wise, S. B.; Buhr, S. M.

2009-12-01

With the release of the Essential Principles of Climate Science Literacy: A Guide for Individuals and Communities in the Spring of 2009, an important step toward an shared educational and communication framework about climate science was achieved. Designed as a living document, reviewed and endorsed by the thirteen federal agencies in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (now U.S. Global Change Research Program), the Essential Principles of Climate Literacy complement other Earth system literacy efforts. A variety of emerging efforts have begun to build on the framework using a variety of cyberlearning tools, including an online Climate Literacy course developed by Education and Outreach group at CIRES, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, and the Independent Learning program of the Continuing Education Division at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The online course, piloted during the Summer of 2009 with formal classroom teachers and informal science educators, made use of the online Climate Literacy Handbook, which was developed by CIRES Education and Outreach and the Encyclopedia of Earth, which is supported by the National Council for Science and the Environment and hosted by Boston University. This paper will explore challenges and opportunities in the use of cyberlearning tools to support climate literacy efforts, highlight the development of the online course and handbook, and note related emerging cyberlearning platforms and programs for climate literacy, including related efforts by the Climate Literacy Network, the NASA Global Climate Change Education programs, the National STEM Education Distributed Learning (NSDL) and AAAS Project 2061.

Forest Adaptation Resources: climate change tools and approaches for land managers, 2nd edition

Science.gov (United States)

Christopher W. Swanston; Maria K. Janowiak; Leslie A. Brandt; Patricia R. Butler; Stephen D. Handler; P. Danielle Shannon; Abigail Derby Lewis; Kimberly Hall; Robert T. Fahey; Lydia Scott; Angela Kerber; Jason W. Miesbauer; Lindsay. Darling

2016-01-01

Forests across the United States are expected to undergo numerous changes in response to the changing climate. This second edition of the Forest Adaptation Resources provides a collection of resources designed to help forest managers incorporate climate change considerations into management and devise adaptation tactics. It was developed as part of the Climate Change...

A Web Based Geographic Information Platform to Support Urban Adaptation to Climate Change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Nugent, Philip J [ORNL; Omitaomu, Olufemi A [ORNL; Parish, Esther S [ORNL; Mei, Rui [ORNL; Ernst, Kathleen M [ORNL; Absar, Mariya [ORNL

2015-01-01

The urban climate is changing rapidly. Therefore, climate change and its projected impacts on environmental conditions must be considered in assessing and comparing urban planning alternatives. In this paper, we present an integrated framework for urban climate adaptation tool (Urban-CAT) that will help cities to plan for, rather than react to, possible risks. Urban-CAT will be developed as a scenario planning tool that is locally relevant to existing urban decision-making processes.

Climate changes and water resource planning: WIZ, an operational tool

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bernardo Mazzanti

2013-09-01

Full Text Available The institutional activity of the Arno River Basin Authority is focused on two strategical planning processes: the River Basin Management Plan, according to 2000/60/CE European Direcitve, and the Flood Management Plan, according to 2007/60/CE European Directive. Both plans contain most of the contents of Arno River Basin Plan, developed after the italian law L. 183/89, and are tackling with a global approach the management of extreme flood events and water budget problems. In this context, the evaluation of climate change impact on the water cycle is extremely relevant. Therefore the Arno River Basin Authority is engaged to analyze the impact of climate changes on water status, regarding as main reference the IPCC AR4 report e their connected forecasting scenarios. The involvement in a LIFE+ project (WIZ – WaterIZe Spatial Planning is the framework for a sample of preliminary evaluations, with the aim to include in the next updated edition of River Basin Management Plan new adapting measures (more than mitigation actions, in order to fight the negative impact of climate change on the possibility to achieve the Water Framework Directive’s quality objectives. Focusing the attention on the Lower Arno valley (Valdarno Inferiore and taking into account as simplifying hypothesis a linear correlation between groundwater recharge and total rainfall fluctuations, the effects of actual and projected climate changes are evaluated. For each water abstraction area, the potential variation of available groundwater for antropic use (in cubic meter per year is estimated, showing a decreasing trend ranging, with a high spatial variability, in a 5-10% interval. Due the increase of water demand and the distribution network losses, even such a percentage of decreasing potential recharge should be carefully evaluated; without water savings measures and investments on the renovation of distribution networks, an increase of the typical summer water scarcity crisis

Web-based access, aggregation, and visualization of future climate projections with emphasis on agricultural assessments

Science.gov (United States)

Villoria, Nelson B.; Elliott, Joshua; Müller, Christoph; Shin, Jaewoo; Zhao, Lan; Song, Carol

2018-01-01

Access to climate and spatial datasets by non-specialists is restricted by technical barriers involving hardware, software and data formats. We discuss an open-source online tool that facilitates downloading the climate data from the global circulation models used by the Inter-Sectoral Impacts Model Intercomparison Project. The tool also offers temporal and spatial aggregation capabilities for incorporating future climate scenarios in applications where spatial aggregation is important. We hope that streamlined access to these data facilitates analysis of climate related issues while considering the uncertainties derived from future climate projections and temporal aggregation choices.

Development of Low Global Warming Potential Refrigerant Solutions for Commercial Refrigeration Systems using a Life Cycle Climate Performance Design Tool

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Abdelaziz, Omar [ORNL; Fricke, Brian A [ORNL; Vineyard, Edward Allan [ORNL

2012-01-01

Commercial refrigeration systems are known to be prone to high leak rates and to consume large amounts of electricity. As such, direct emissions related to refrigerant leakage and indirect emissions resulting from primary energy consumption contribute greatly to their Life Cycle Climate Performance (LCCP). In this paper, an LCCP design tool is used to evaluate the performance of a typical commercial refrigeration system with alternative refrigerants and minor system modifications to provide lower Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerant solutions with improved LCCP compared to baseline systems. The LCCP design tool accounts for system performance, ambient temperature, and system load; system performance is evaluated using a validated vapor compression system simulation tool while ambient temperature and system load are devised from a widely used building energy modeling tool (EnergyPlus). The LCCP design tool also accounts for the change in hourly electricity emission rate to yield an accurate prediction of indirect emissions. The analysis shows that conventional commercial refrigeration system life cycle emissions are largely due to direct emissions associated with refrigerant leaks and that system efficiency plays a smaller role in the LCCP. However, as a transition occurs to low GWP refrigerants, the indirect emissions become more relevant. Low GWP refrigerants may not be suitable for drop-in replacements in conventional commercial refrigeration systems; however some mixtures may be introduced as transitional drop-in replacements. These transitional refrigerants have a significantly lower GWP than baseline refrigerants and as such, improved LCCP. The paper concludes with a brief discussion on the tradeoffs between refrigerant GWP, efficiency and capacity.

Simple greenhouse climate model as a design tool for greenhouses in tropical lowland

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Impron, I.; Hemming-Hoffmann, S.; Bot, G.P.A.

2007-01-01

Six prototypes plastic greenhouses were built in the tropical lowlands of Indonesia. The geometrical dimensions were designed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) by taking local climate parameters as static reference boundary conditions. It is necessary to evaluate the climate dynamics inside

Accelerator mass spectrometry: An important tool for the geochronology of past climatic events

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jull, A.J.T.; Burr, G.S.; Beck, J.W.; Donahue, D.J.

2002-01-01

The development of a good chronology is very important to the understanding of past climatic changes and their relationship to other events. The correlation of distinct climatic features requires a precise chronology. More important also is the need to be able to correlate phenomena which are dated independently. For example, several authors have tried to cross-correlate climatic events observed in Greenland ice cores with climatic events identified in other terrestrial and marine records. The improvement in the radiocarbon calibration curve over the last 25,000 yr and the ability to cross-correlate fluctuations in the 14 C curve directly with those in the ice-core records has improved the situation. This extension of the calibration curve uses tree rings to about 11,900 calibrated years and beyond, using corals and varved marine sediments. Other records take us back to the limits of radiocarbon dating, using lake sediments and speleothems. Another important problem in geochronology of past climate change is that events may be manifest differently in different parts of the world. For example, the uniformly 'cold' younger Dryas in northern Europe can be correlated with oscillatory cold and wet behavior in other parts of the world. Chinese loess deposits show an oscillatory pattern during this time period, and the deserts of the American southwest show a drought followed by a period of increased precipitation. Hence, we must identify local and regional variations as well as global events. Many megafuana became extinct close to the end of the late Pleistocene and the exact time of these extinctions, and whether they are cause by climate alone, or by other pressures such as the expansion of humans into previously unoccupied areas. The exact timing of climatic change is also of importance in understanding the expansion of early man in the New World. The exact time of arrival of early man in the western hemisphere is usually thought to be close to the end of the last

Desert dust and anthropogenic aerosol interactions in the Community Climate System Model coupled-carbon-climate model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

N. Mahowald

2011-02-01

Full Text Available Coupled-carbon-climate simulations are an essential tool for predicting the impact of human activity onto the climate and biogeochemistry. Here we incorporate prognostic desert dust and anthropogenic aerosols into the CCSM3.1 coupled carbon-climate model and explore the resulting interactions with climate and biogeochemical dynamics through a series of transient anthropogenic simulations (20th and 21st centuries and sensitivity studies. The inclusion of prognostic aerosols into this model has a small net global cooling effect on climate but does not significantly impact the globally averaged carbon cycle; we argue that this is likely to be because the CCSM3.1 model has a small climate feedback onto the carbon cycle. We propose a mechanism for including desert dust and anthropogenic aerosols into a simple carbon-climate feedback analysis to explain the results of our and previous studies. Inclusion of aerosols has statistically significant impacts on regional climate and biogeochemistry, in particular through the effects on the ocean nitrogen cycle and primary productivity of altered iron inputs from desert dust deposition.

Improved Analysis of Earth System Models and Observations using Simple Climate Models

Science.gov (United States)

Nadiga, B. T.; Urban, N. M.

2016-12-01

Earth system models (ESM) are the most comprehensive tools we have to study climate change and develop climate projections. However, the computational infrastructure required and the cost incurred in running such ESMs precludes direct use of such models in conjunction with a wide variety of tools that can further our understanding of climate. Here we are referring to tools that range from dynamical systems tools that give insight into underlying flow structure and topology to tools that come from various applied mathematical and statistical techniques and are central to quantifying stability, sensitivity, uncertainty and predictability to machine learning tools that are now being rapidly developed or improved. Our approach to facilitate the use of such models is to analyze output of ESM experiments (cf. CMIP) using a range of simpler models that consider integral balances of important quantities such as mass and/or energy in a Bayesian framework.We highlight the use of this approach in the context of the uptake of heat by the world oceans in the ongoing global warming. Indeed, since in excess of 90% of the anomalous radiative forcing due greenhouse gas emissions is sequestered in the world oceans, the nature of ocean heat uptake crucially determines the surface warming that is realized (cf. climate sensitivity). Nevertheless, ESMs themselves are never run long enough to directly assess climate sensitivity. So, we consider a range of models based on integral balances--balances that have to be realized in all first-principles based models of the climate system including the most detailed state-of-the art climate simulations. The models range from simple models of energy balance to those that consider dynamically important ocean processes such as the conveyor-belt circulation (Meridional Overturning Circulation, MOC), North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) formation, Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and eddy mixing. Results from Bayesian analysis of such models using

Sweden's Future Climate in the short- and medium-term perspective. Basis for development of climate adaptation tools; Sveriges framtida klimat paa kort och medellaang sikt. Underlag foer utveckling av verktyg foer klimatanpassning

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Carlsen, Henrik; Parmhed, Oskar

2008-12-15

This report studies two questions - how the actual amount of greenhouse gas emissions has changed over time in comparison with previous assumptions and what will happen to Sweden's climate from short and medium term perspectives given the future development of the climate in general. The content of this report shall be used as the basis for continued work in the development of climate adaptation tools that can be used primarily in Sweden. The first section of this report presents the development of actual greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. Eight years have passed since IPCC published its emissions scenarios (SRES) and for this reason a comparison between the emissions levels from the report and the experimental data from observations made in recent years is well due. Measurements show that current levels of emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels exceed the average of the SRES families as a whole. Among other implications, this means that emission levels are significantly higher than the levels assumed in the climate scenarios of the Swedish Commission on Climate and Vulnerability (Klimat- och saarbarhetsutredningen). There is little support from the experimental data to indicate that this rate of increase will subside. In addition, studies are indicating that the increased emissions are not solely attributable to a rise in population levels and increased wealth (GNP/capita). Another aspect is that the carbon intensity, measured as the amount of carbon dioxide per unit production price, has been declining since 2000. This is entirely contrary to the assumptions made in all of the emissions scenarios in SRES that carbon dioxide efficiency would continue to increase. The report therefore concludes that work with climate adaptation in Sweden must take into consideration to a greater extent than is currently done today the consequences of emissions levels that are in line with or exceed the highest SRES levels. The second section of this report takes

Hydrological modeling as an evaluation tool of EURO-CORDEX climate projections and bias correction methods

Science.gov (United States)

Hakala, Kirsti; Addor, Nans; Seibert, Jan

2017-04-01

Streamflow stemming from Switzerland's mountainous landscape will be influenced by climate change, which will pose significant challenges to the water management and policy sector. In climate change impact research, the determination of future streamflow is impeded by different sources of uncertainty, which propagate through the model chain. In this research, we explicitly considered the following sources of uncertainty: (1) climate models, (2) downscaling of the climate projections to the catchment scale, (3) bias correction method and (4) parameterization of the hydrological model. We utilize climate projections at the 0.11 degree 12.5 km resolution from the EURO-CORDEX project, which are the most recent climate projections for the European domain. EURO-CORDEX is comprised of regional climate model (RCM) simulations, which have been downscaled from global climate models (GCMs) from the CMIP5 archive, using both dynamical and statistical techniques. Uncertainties are explored by applying a modeling chain involving 14 GCM-RCMs to ten Swiss catchments. We utilize the rainfall-runoff model HBV Light, which has been widely used in operational hydrological forecasting. The Lindström measure, a combination of model efficiency and volume error, was used as an objective function to calibrate HBV Light. Ten best sets of parameters are then achieved by calibrating using the genetic algorithm and Powell optimization (GAP) method. The GAP optimization method is based on the evolution of parameter sets, which works by selecting and recombining high performing parameter sets with each other. Once HBV is calibrated, we then perform a quantitative comparison of the influence of biases inherited from climate model simulations to the biases stemming from the hydrological model. The evaluation is conducted over two time periods: i) 1980-2009 to characterize the simulation realism under the current climate and ii) 2070-2099 to identify the magnitude of the projected change of

Branching out: Agroforestry as a climate change mitigation and adaptation tool for agriculture

Science.gov (United States)

The United States and Canadian agricultural lands are being targeted to provide more environmental and economic services while at the same time their capacity to provide these services under potential climate change (CC) is being questioned. Predictions of future climate conditions include longer gr...

Understanding the school 'climate': secondary school children and climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kovacs, Susan; Bernier, Sandrine; Blanchet, Aymeric; Derkenne, Chantal; Clement, Florence; Petitjean, Leslie

2012-01-01

This interdisciplinary study analyzes the production, circulation and reception of messages on climate change in secondary schools in France. The objective is to understand how political and educational policy initiatives influence the ways in which schools contribute to creating youngsters' perceptions and opinions about climate change. In order to study the conditions of production and reception of information about climate change, a survey was conducted in four French secondary schools, in the 'Bas Rhin' and 'Nord' departments, and local political actors in each department were interviewed. The cross disciplinary analytical and methodological approach uses the tools of sociological inquiry, information science, and political science: questionnaires and interviews were conducted with members of the educational and governmental communities of each school and department, semiotic and discursive analyses of corpuses of documents were carried out, in order to characterize documents used by students and teachers at school or in more informal contexts; the nature and extent of the relations between the political contexts and school directives and programs were also discussed. This interdisciplinary approach, combining sociological, communicational, and political methods, was chosen in response to the hypothesis that three types of variables (social, communicational and political) contribute to the structuring and production of messages about climate change in schools. This report offers a contextualized overview of activities developed within the four secondary schools to help sensitize children to the risks associated with climate change. A study of the networks of individuals (teachers, staff, members of associations, etc.) created in and around the school environment is presented. The degree of involvement of these actors in climate change programs is analyzed, as it is related to their motives and objectives, to the school discipline taught, and to the position

Communicating climate information: travelling through the decision-making process

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stoverinck, F.; Dubois, G.; Amelung, B.

2013-01-01

Climate change forces society to adapt. Adaptation strategies are preferably based on the best available climate information. Climate projections, however, often inform adaptation strategies after being interpreted once or several times. This process affects the original message put forward by climate scientists when presenting the basic climate projections, in particular regarding uncertainties. The nature of this effect and its implications for decision-making are as yet poorly understood. This paper explores the nature and consequences of a) the communication tools used by scientists and experts, and b)changes in the communicated information as it travels through the decision-making process. It does so by analysing the interpretative steps taken in a sample of 25 documents, pertaining to the field of public policies for climate change impact assessment and adaptation strategies. Five phases in the provisioning of climate information are distinguished: pre-existing knowledge (i.e. climate models and data), climate- change projection, impact assessment, adaptation strategy, and adaptation plan. Between the phases, climate information is summarized and synthesised in order to be passed on. The results show that in the sample information on uncertainty is under-represented: e.g. studies focus on only one scenario, and/or disregard probability distributions. In addition, visualization tools are often used ineffectively, leading to confusion and unintended interpretations. Several recommendations are presented. A better training of climatologists to communication issues, but also a training to climatology for decision makers are required, as well as more cautious and robust adaptation strategies, accounting for the uncertainty inherent to climate projections. (authors)

Etude Climat no. 36 'Regional Climate - Air - Energy Plans: a tool for guiding the energy and climate transition in French regions'

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

De Charentenay, Jeremie; Leseur, Alexia; Bordier, Cecile

2012-01-01

Among the publications of CDC Climat Research, 'Climate Reports' offer in-depth analyses on a given subject. This issue addresses the following points: The Regional Climate-Air-Energy Plan (SRCAE - Schema Regional Climat-Air-Energie) was introduced by the Grenelle II legislation. The Plans are co-authored by the State through its decentralised services and the 'Conseil Regionaux' (regional councils) with the objective to guide climate and energy policy in the 26 French regions through to 2020 and 2050. Starting from an assessment of regional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the SRCAE establishes energy transition scenarios based on the sectoral and structural guidelines that constitute the principal framework of the regional strategy. This report offers a detailed analysis of the strategies chosen by the various Regions for a successful transition to low-carbon energy sources, via the study of eleven SRCAEs that were opened to public consultation before the end of July 2012 (Alsace, Aquitaine, Auvergne, Bourgogne, Centre, Champagne-Ardenne, Ile-de-France, Midi-Pyrenees, Nord-Pas de Calais, Picardie and Rhone-Alpes regions). The wide range of methodologies used by the Regions, both to draw up their inventories of GHG emissions and for their scenarios, means that a quantitative comparison between regions or against the national objectives is not possible. Nevertheless, the report establishes a typology of regions and identifies policies that are common to all regions and those chosen in response to local characteristics. Certain guidelines could be applied by other regions of the same type, or could feed into discussions at national level. The report also indicates that the SRCAEs go beyond the competencies of the Regions, highlighting the role of local, national and European decision-making in the success of a regional energy transition. Particular attention was paid to the building and transport sectors, often identified as having the largest potential for reducing

Determining the climate impact of the German government's Integrated Energy and Climate Programme (IEKP) and proposing a plan to continuously monitor its climate impact. Work package 3. Description of monitoring tools for the Integrated Energy and Climate Programme (IEKP); Ermittlung der Klimaschutzwirkung des Integrierten Energie- und Klimaschutzprogramms der Bundesregierung IEKP und Vorschlag fuer ein Konzept zur kontinuierlichen Ueberpruefung der Klimaschutzwirkung des IEKP. Arbeitspaket 3. Beschreibung des Monitoringtools fuer das Integrierte Energie- und Klimaschutzprogramm (IEKP)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Doll, Claus; Eichhammer, Wolfgang; Fleiter, Tobias [Fraunhofer-Institut fuer System- und Innovationsforschung, Karlsruhe (DE)] (and others)

2012-02-15

The reports on the Work Packages 1 and 2 describe the development of the monitoring concept for the individual measures of the integrated energy and climate program (IEKP). In the third work package, the monitoring concept was developed in an Excel tool presenting the actual output of the third work package The authors of the contribution under consideration describe the functionality of this Excel tool.

Biotic and Climatic Velocity Identify Contrasting Areas of Vulnerability to Climate Change

Science.gov (United States)

Carroll, Carlos; Lawler, Joshua J.; Roberts, David R.; Hamann, Andreas

2015-01-01

Metrics that synthesize the complex effects of climate change are essential tools for mapping future threats to biodiversity and predicting which species are likely to adapt in place to new climatic conditions, disperse and establish in areas with newly suitable climate, or face the prospect of extirpation. The most commonly used of such metrics is the velocity of climate change, which estimates the speed at which species must migrate over the earth’s surface to maintain constant climatic conditions. However, “analog-based” velocities, which represent the actual distance to where analogous climates will be found in the future, may provide contrasting results to the more common form of velocity based on local climate gradients. Additionally, whereas climatic velocity reflects the exposure of organisms to climate change, resultant biotic effects are dependent on the sensitivity of individual species as reflected in part by their climatic niche width. This has motivated development of biotic velocity, a metric which uses data on projected species range shifts to estimate the velocity at which species must move to track their climatic niche. We calculated climatic and biotic velocity for the Western Hemisphere for 1961–2100, and applied the results to example ecological and conservation planning questions, to demonstrate the potential of such analog-based metrics to provide information on broad-scale patterns of exposure and sensitivity. Geographic patterns of biotic velocity for 2954 species of birds, mammals, and amphibians differed from climatic velocity in north temperate and boreal regions. However, both biotic and climatic velocities were greatest at low latitudes, implying that threats to equatorial species arise from both the future magnitude of climatic velocities and the narrow climatic tolerances of species in these regions, which currently experience low seasonal and interannual climatic variability. Biotic and climatic velocity, by approximating

Turning Misinformation into Climate Change Education

Science.gov (United States)

Borah, N.; Cook, J.

2017-12-01

Misinformation reduces science literacy and interferes with new learning. This undermines the application of science to understanding and addressing important societal issues. Intentional misinformation and fake news is of growing concern to the scientists, educators and policymakers. Specifically, misinformation about human-caused climate change has become prominent in recent times creating confusion among the public. Hence, interventions that inoculate people against climate change misinformation are very much necessary. One of the most promising applications of inoculation is in the classroom, using a teaching approach known as misconception-based learning. This involves explaining scientific concepts while directly refuting related misconceptions. Misconception-based learning is a powerful way to neutralize the influence of climate change misinformation by increasing both science literacy and critical thinking skills. Students do not possess as many erroneous preconceptions about climate change relative to adults and hence correcting such misconceptions among students is more effective using this teaching approach. The misconception-based teaching approach has a number of benefits. It results in greater and longer-lasting learning gains relative to standard lessons. It equips students with the tools and knowledge to distinguish between facts and myths and increases confidence to engage in constructive discussion with family and friends about climate change. Further, research has shown that students have an effect on parents' environmental attitudes and behavior. Consequently, misconception-based learning presents the opportunity to reach the adult community through the students. We have developed a high school climate change curriculum based on the misconception-based learning framework. Our intent is to run a pilot project that tests the impact of this curriculum on students' climate perceptions, and any second-order influence on their parents. This research

EPA Center for Corporate Climate Leadership

Science.gov (United States)

EPA's Center for Corporate Climate Leadership is a comprehensive resource to help organizations measure & manage GHG emissions. The Center provides technical tools, educational resources, opportunities for information sharing & highlights best practices.

Indoor Climate of Large Glazed Spaces

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hendriksen, Ole Juhl; Madsen, Christina E.; Heiselberg, Per

In recent years large glazed spaces has found increased use both in connection with renovation of buildings and as part of new buildings. One of the objectives is to add an architectural element, which combines indoor- and outdoor climate. In order to obtain a satisfying indoor climate it is crui...... it is cruicial at the design stage to be able to predict the performance regarding thermal comfort and energy consumption. This paper focus on the practical implementation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and the relation to other simulation tools regarding indoor climate.......In recent years large glazed spaces has found increased use both in connection with renovation of buildings and as part of new buildings. One of the objectives is to add an architectural element, which combines indoor- and outdoor climate. In order to obtain a satisfying indoor climate...

Building partnerships to produce actionable science to support climate-informed management decisions: North Central Climate Science Center example

Science.gov (United States)

Lackett, J.; Ojima, D. S.; McNeeley, S.

2017-12-01

As climate change impacts become more apparent in our environment, action is needed to enhance the social-ecological system resilience. Incorporating principles which lead to actionable research and project co-development, when appropriate, will facilitate building linkages between the research and the natural resource management communities. In order to develop strategies to manage for climatic and ecosystem changes, collaborative actions are needed between researchers and resource managers to apply appropriate knowledge of the ecosystem and management environments to enable feasible solutions and management actions to respond to climate change. Our team has been involved in developing and establishing a research and engagement center, the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC), for the US Department of Interior, to support the development and translation of pertinent climate science information to natural resource managers in the north central portion of the United States. The NC CSC has implemented a platform to support the Resource for Vulnerability Assessment, Adaptation, and Mitigation Projects (ReVAMP) with research, engagement, and training activities to support resource managers and researchers. These activities are aimed at the co-production of appropriate response strategies to climate change in the region, in particular to drought-related responses. Through this platform we, with other partners in the region, including the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture, are bringing various training tools, climate information, and management planning tools to resource managers. The implementation of ReVAMP has led to development of planning efforts which include a more explicit representation of climate change as a driver of drought events in our region. Scenario planning provides a process which integrates management goals with possible outcomes derived from observations and simulations of ecological impacts of climate change. Co

Modeling maize response to climate modification in Hungary

OpenAIRE

Angela Anda

2006-01-01

Modeling provides a tool for a better understanding of the modified plant behaviour that results from various climatic differences. The present study provides new information about the physiological processes in maize (Zea mays L.) in response to climatic changes. The aim was to help local farmers adapt to climate modifications in Hungary and mitigate the future consequences of these changes. A simulation model was applied to estimate the possible feedback on crop properties and elevated CO2....

The GIS and data solution for advanced business analysis

OpenAIRE

RADUT Carmen

2009-01-01

The GIS Business Analyst is a suite of Geographic Information System (GIS)-enabled tools, wizards, and data that provides business professionals with a complete solution for site evaluation, selective customer profiling, and trade area market analysis. Running simple reports, mapping the results, and performing complex probability models are among the capabilities The GIS Business Analyst offers in one affordable desktop analysis solution. Data and analyses produced by The GIS Business Analys...

Economy and policy of climatic changes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Faucheux, S.; Joumni, H.

2005-01-01

In an economical framework, this book discusses the following topics: policies against the climatic changes, the scientific prospectives facing this policies priority, their costs, the new international market of carbon, the future technological innovations. This book exposes also socio-economic, geopolitical and technological questions bound to theses climatic changes and their regulation. It analyzes more especially the North-South strategies and the flexibility tools challenges of the Kyoto protocol. (A.L.B.)

Developing rural community health risk assessments for climate change: a Tasmanian pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Bell, Erica J; Turner, Paul; Meinke, Holger; Holbrook, Neil J

2015-01-01

This article examines the development and pilot implementation of an approach to support local community decision-makers to plan health adaptation responses to climate change. The approach involves health and wellbeing risk assessment supported through the use of an electronic tool. While climate change is a major foreseeable public health threat, the extent to which health services are prepared for, or able to adequately respond to, climate change impact-related risks remains unclear. Building health decision-support mechanisms in order to involve and empower local stakeholders to help create the basis for agreement on these adaptive actions is an important first step. The primary research question was 'What can be learned from pilot implementation of a community health and well-being risk assessment (CHWRA) information technology-based tool designed to support understanding of, and decision-making on, local community challenges and opportunities associated with health risks posed by climate change? The article examines the complexity of climate change science to adaptation translational processes, with reference to existing research literature on community development. This is done in the context of addressing human health risks for rural and remote communities in Tasmania, Australia. This process is further examined through the pilot implementation of an electronic tool designed to support the translation of physically based climate change impact information into community-level assessments of health risks and adaptation priorities. The procedural and technical nature of the CHWRA tool is described, and the implications of the data gathered from stakeholder workshops held at three rural Tasmanian local government sites are considered and discussed. Bushfire, depression and waterborne diseases were identified by community stakeholders as being potentially 'catastrophic' health effects 'likely' to 'almost certain' to occur at one or more Tasmanian rural sites

Investigating Climate Change Issues With Web-Based Geospatial Inquiry Activities

Science.gov (United States)

Dempsey, C.; Bodzin, A. M.; Sahagian, D. L.; Anastasio, D. J.; Peffer, T.; Cirucci, L.

2011-12-01

In the Environmental Literacy and Inquiry middle school Climate Change curriculum we focus on essential climate literacy principles with an emphasis on weather and climate, Earth system energy balance, greenhouse gases, paleoclimatology, and how human activities influence climate change (http://www.ei.lehigh.edu/eli/cc/). It incorporates a related set of a framework and design principles to provide guidance for the development of the geospatial technology-integrated Earth and environmental science curriculum materials. Students use virtual globes, Web-based tools including an interactive carbon calculator and geologic timeline, and inquiry-based lab activities to investigate climate change topics. The curriculum includes educative curriculum materials that are designed to promote and support teachers' learning of important climate change content and issues, geospatial pedagogical content knowledge, and geographic spatial thinking. The curriculum includes baseline instructional guidance for teachers and provides implementation and adaptation guidance for teaching with diverse learners including low-level readers, English language learners and students with disabilities. In the curriculum, students use geospatial technology tools including Google Earth with embedded spatial data to investigate global temperature changes, areas affected by climate change, evidence of climate change, and the effects of sea level rise on the existing landscape. We conducted a designed-based research implementation study with urban middle school students. Findings showed that the use of the Climate Change curriculum showed significant improvement in urban middle school students' understanding of climate change concepts.

Implementing adaptation strategies by legal, economic and planning instruments on climate change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Albrecht, Eike; Missler-Behr, Magdalena; Schmidt, Michael; Spyra, Simon P.N. (eds.) [Brandenburg Univ. of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (Germany)

2014-07-01

The causes and effects of climate change are just as varied as the proposed solutions and approaches for dealing with the problem. Given the global character of climate change, comprehensive global cooperation is called for that leads to effective and appropriate international action in accordance with the respective responsibilities. These will inevitably differ depending on the capabilities and the social and economic situations of the respective actors. The contributions in this book present a variety of ideas, approaches and tools regarding the adaptation to climate change in specific countries and regions. In addition to examining (existing) legal instruments, they also focus on the implementation of economic instruments and planning tools, as well as their (further) development. Rather than simply discussing strategies to counteract climate change by reducing emissions, the authors also search for ways of actively adapting to climate change.

Implementing adaptation strategies by legal, economic and planning instruments on climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Albrecht, Eike; Missler-Behr, Magdalena; Schmidt, Michael; Spyra, Simon P.N.

2014-01-01

The causes and effects of climate change are just as varied as the proposed solutions and approaches for dealing with the problem. Given the global character of climate change, comprehensive global cooperation is called for that leads to effective and appropriate international action in accordance with the respective responsibilities. These will inevitably differ depending on the capabilities and the social and economic situations of the respective actors. The contributions in this book present a variety of ideas, approaches and tools regarding the adaptation to climate change in specific countries and regions. In addition to examining (existing) legal instruments, they also focus on the implementation of economic instruments and planning tools, as well as their (further) development. Rather than simply discussing strategies to counteract climate change by reducing emissions, the authors also search for ways of actively adapting to climate change.

Climate information for public health: the role of the IRI climate data library in an integrated knowledge system.

Science.gov (United States)

del Corral, John; Blumenthal, M Benno; Mantilla, Gilma; Ceccato, Pietro; Connor, Stephen J; Thomson, Madeleine C

2012-09-01

Public health professionals are increasingly concerned about the potential impact of climate variability and change on health outcomes. Protecting public health from the vagaries of climate requires new working relationships between the public health sector and the providers of climate data and information. The Climate Information for Public Health Action initiative at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) is designed to increase the public health community's capacity to understand, use and demand appropriate climate data and climate information to mitigate the public health impacts of the climate. Significant challenges to building the capacity of health professionals to use climate information in research and decision-making include the difficulties experienced by many in accessing relevant and timely quality controlled data and information in formats that can be readily incorporated into specific analysis with other data sources. We present here the capacities of the IRI climate data library and show how we have used it to build an integrated knowledge system in the support of the use of climate and environmental information in climate-sensitive decision-making with respect to health. Initiated as an aid facilitating exploratory data analysis for climate scientists, the IRI climate data library has emerged as a powerful tool for interdisciplinary researchers focused on topics related to climate impacts on society, including health.

Assessment of climate change scenarios for Saudi Arabia using data from global climate models

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Husain, T.; Chowdhury, S.

2009-01-01

This study assesses available scientific information and data to predict changes in the climatic parameters in Saudi Arabia for understanding the impacts for mitigation and/or adaptation. Meteorological data from 26 synoptic stations were analyzed in this study. Various climatic change scenarios were reviewed and A 2 and B 2 climatic scenario families were selected. In order to assess long-term global impact, global climatic models were used to simulate changes in temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, and wind circulation. Using global climate model (GCM), monthly time series data was retrieved for Longitude 15 o N to 35 o N and 32.5 o E to 60 o E covering the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1970 to 2100 for all grids. Taking averages of 1970 to 2003 as baseline, change in temperature, relative humidity and precipitation were estimated for the base period. A comparative evaluation was performed for predictive capabilities of these models for temperature, precipitation and relative humidity. Available meteorological data from 1970 to 2003 was used to determine trends. This paper discusses the inconsistency in these parameters for decision-making and recommends future studies by linking global climate models with a suitable regional climate modeling tool. (author)

Using Weather Types to Understand and Communicate Weather and Climate Impacts

Science.gov (United States)

Prein, A. F.; Hale, B.; Holland, G. J.; Bruyere, C. L.; Done, J.; Mearns, L.

2017-12-01

A common challenge in atmospheric research is the translation of scientific advancements and breakthroughs to decision relevant and actionable information. This challenge is central to the mission of NCAR's Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes (C3WE, www.c3we.ucar.edu). C3WE advances our understanding of weather and climate impacts and integrates these advances with distributed information technology to create tools that promote a global culture of resilience to weather and climate extremes. Here we will present an interactive web-based tool that connects historic U.S. losses and fatalities from extreme weather and climate events to 12 large-scale weather types. Weather types are dominant weather situations such as winter high-pressure systems over the U.S. leading to very cold temperatures or summertime moist humid air masses over the central U.S. leading to severe thunderstorms. Each weather type has a specific fingerprint of economic losses and fatalities in a region that is quantified. Therefore, weather types enable a direct connection of observed or forecasted weather situation to loss of life and property. The presented tool allows the user to explore these connections, raise awareness of existing vulnerabilities, and build resilience to weather and climate extremes.

The climate4impact portal: bridging the CMIP5 and CORDEX data infrastructure to impact users

Science.gov (United States)

Plieger, Maarten; Som de Cerff, Wim; Pagé, Christian; Tatarinova, Natalia; Cofiño, Antonio; Vega Saldarriaga, Manuel; Hutjes, Ronald; de Jong, Fokke; Bärring, Lars; Sjökvist, Elin

2015-04-01

Web Processing Services implemented by PyWPS, based on NCAR NCPP OpenClimateGIS and IS-ENES2 icclim. - Security: Login using OpenID for access to the ESGF data nodes. The ESGF works in conjunction with several external websites and systems. The climate4impact portal uses X509 based short lived credentials, generated on behalf of the user with a MyProxy service. Single Sign-on (SSO) is used to make these websites and systems work together. - Discovery: Facetted search based on e.g. variable name, model and institute using the ESGF search services. A catalog browser allows for browsing through CMIP5 and any other climate model data catalogues (e.g. ESSENCE, EOBS, UNIDATA). - Download: Directly from ESGF nodes and other THREDDS catalogs This architecture will also be used for the future Copernicus platform, developed in the EU FP7 CLIPC project. - Connection with the downscaling portal of the university of Cantabria - Experiences on the question and answer site via Askbot The current main objectives for climate4impact can be summarized in two objectives. The first one is to work on a web interface which automatically generates a graphical user interface on WPS endpoints. The WPS calculates climate indices and subset data using OpenClimateGIS/icclim on data stored in ESGF data nodes. Data is then transmitted from ESGF nodes over secured OpenDAP and becomes available in a new, per user, secured OpenDAP server. The results can then be visualized again using ADAGUC WMS. Dedicated wizards for processing of climate indices will be developed in close collaboration with users. The second one is to expose climate4impact services, so as to offer standardized services which can be used by other portals. This has the advantage to add interoperability between several portals, as well as to enable the design of specific portals aimed at different impact communities, either thematic or national, for example.

General review on climate change problems: causes, potential effects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Martellet, J.

1991-01-01

Greenhouse gases and greenhouse effect principles are reviewed and climate changes due to the human activities are discussed: identification of gases, human or natural causes, composition evolution in the atmosphere and relative roles of greenhouse gases. The various tools and calculations methods for evaluating the climate change due to greenhouse effect are presented. Several problems are stated: evolution of the climate structure in 2030, variations of the climatic extremes and the extreme phenomena, augmentation or diminution of the storms on a warmed planet, long term evolution of the climate. Some consequences of a climate change are reviewed: sea level raising, climate change effects on ecosystems. Precision and validity of these predictions are discussed; recommendations for diminishing the uncertainties are proposed

Integration of Linear Dynamic Emission and Climate Models with Air Traffic Simulations

Science.gov (United States)

Sridhar, Banavar; Ng, Hok K.; Chen, Neil Y.

2012-01-01

Future air traffic management systems are required to balance the conflicting objectives of maximizing safety and efficiency of traffic flows while minimizing the climate impact of aviation emissions and contrails. Integrating emission and climate models together with air traffic simulations improve the understanding of the complex interaction between the physical climate system, carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and aviation activity. This paper integrates a national-level air traffic simulation and optimization capability with simple climate models and carbon cycle models, and climate metrics to assess the impact of aviation on climate. The capability can be used to make trade-offs between extra fuel cost and reduction in global surface temperature change. The parameters in the simulation can be used to evaluate the effect of various uncertainties in emission models and contrails and the impact of different decision horizons. Alternatively, the optimization results from the simulation can be used as inputs to other tools that monetize global climate impacts like the FAA s Aviation Environmental Portfolio Management Tool for Impacts.

prediction of the impacts of climate changes on the stream flow

African Journals Online (AJOL)

HOD

Soil and Water Assessment Tool, (SWAT) model was used to predict the impacts of Climate Change on Ajali River watershed ... Climate is the synthesis of atmospheric conditions characteristic of a .... generator available in the SWAT model.

DengueTools: innovative tools and strategies for the surveillance and control of dengue

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Annelies Wilder-Smith

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease estimated to cause about 230 million infections worldwide every year, of which 25,000 are fatal. Global incidence has risen rapidly in recent decades with some 3.6 billion people, over half of the world's population, now at risk, mainly in urban centres of the tropics and subtropics. Demographic and societal changes, in particular urbanization, globalization, and increased international travel, are major contributors to the rise in incidence and geographic expansion of dengue infections. Major research gaps continue to hamper the control of dengue. The European Commission launched a call under the 7th Framework Programme with the title of ‘Comprehensive control of Dengue fever under changing climatic conditions’. Fourteen partners from several countries in Europe, Asia, and South America formed a consortium named ‘DengueTools’ to respond to the call to achieve better diagnosis, surveillance, prevention, and predictive models and improve our understanding of the spread of dengue to previously uninfected regions (including Europe in the context of globalization and climate change.The consortium comprises 12 work packages to address a set of research questions in three areas: Research area 1: Develop a comprehensive early warning and surveillance system that has predictive capability for epidemic dengue and benefits from novel tools for laboratory diagnosis and vector monitoring. Research area 2: Develop novel strategies to prevent dengue in children. Research area 3: Understand and predict the risk of global spread of dengue, in particular the risk of introduction and establishment in Europe, within the context of parameters of vectorial capacity, global mobility, and climate change.In this paper, we report on the rationale and specific study objectives of ‘DengueTools’. DengueTools is funded under the Health theme of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community, Grant

MstApp, a rich client control applications framework at DESY

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kirsten Hinsch, Winfried Schuette

2012-01-01

The control systems for PETRA 3 (a dedicated synchrotron machine) and its pre-accelerators extensively use rich clients for the control room and the servers. Most of them are written with the help of a rich client Java framework: MstApp. They totalize 106 different consoles and 158 individual server applications. MstApp takes care of many common control system application aspects beyond communication. MstApp provides a common look and feel: core menu items, a colour scheme for standard states of hardware components and predefined standardized screen sizes/locations. It interfaces our console application manager (CAM) and displays on demand our communication link diagnostics tools. MstApp supplies an accelerator context for each application; it handles printing, logging, re-sizing and unexpected application crashes. Due to our standardized deploy process MstApp applications know their individual developers and can even send them - on button press of the users - E-mails. Further a concept of different operation modes is implemented: view only, operating and expert use. Administration of the corresponding rights is done via web access of a database server. Initialization files on a web server are instantiated as JAVA objects with the help of the Java SE XML-Decoder. Data tables are read with the same mechanism. New MstApp applications can easily be created with in house wizards like the NewProjectWizard or the DeviceServerWizard. MstApp improves the operator experience, application developer productivity and delivered software quality. (authors)

Regional climate science: lessons and opportunities

Science.gov (United States)

Mote, P. W.; Miles, E. L.; Whitely Binder, L.

2008-12-01

Since its founding in 1995, the Climate Impacts Group (CIG) at the University of Washington (UW) has achieved remarkable success at translating global- and regional-scale science into forms and products that are useful to, and used by, decision-makers. From GCM scenarios to research on the connection between global climate patterns and locally important factors like floods and wildfires, CIG's strong physical science foundation is matched by a vigorous and successful outreach program. As a result, CIG and its partner the Office of Washington State Climatologist at UW have made substantial progress at bridging the gap between climate science and decision-making, and are deeply involved in advising all levels of government and many business interests on adapting to climate variability and change. This talk will showcase some of the specific activities and tools, describe lessons learned, and illustrate how such efforts fit into a "National Climate Service."

Ecoclimatic indicators to study climate suitability of areas for the cultivation of specific crops

Science.gov (United States)

Caubel, J.; Garcia de Cortazar Atauri, I.; Cufi, J.; Huard, F.; Launay, M.; Ripoche, D.; Graux, A.; deNoblet, N.

2013-12-01

Climatic conditions play a fundamental role in the suitability of geographical areas for cropping. In the context of climate change, we could expect changes in overall climatic conditions and so, on the suitability for cropping. Therefore, assessing the future climate suitability of areas for cropping is decisive for anticipating agriculture in a given area. Moreover, it is crucial to have access to the split up information concerning the effect of climate on the achievement of the main ecophysiological processes and cultural practices taking place during the crop cycle. In this way, stakeholders can envisage land use adaptations under climate change conditions, such as changes in cultural practices or development of new varieties for example. We proposed an aggregation tool of ecoclimatic indicators to design evaluation trees of climate suitability of areas for cropping, GETARI (Generic Evaluation Tool of Ecoclimatic Indicators). It calculates an overall climate suitability index at the annual scale, from a designed evaluation tree. This aggregation tool allows to characterize climate suitability according to crop ecophysiology, grain/fruit quality or crop management. GETARI proposes the major ecophysiological processes and cultural practices taking place during phenological periods, together with the climatic effects that are known to affect their achievement. The climatic effects on the ecophysiological processes (or cultural practices) during phenological periods are captured by the ecoclimatic indicators, which are agroclimatic indicators calculated over phenological periods. They give information about crop response to climate through ecophysiological or agronomic thresholds. Those indices of suitability are normalized and aggregated according to aggregation rules in order to compute an overall climate index. In order to illustrate how GETARI can be used, we designed evaluation trees in order to study the climate suitability for maize cropping regarding

Validation of an organizational communication climate assessment toolkit.

Science.gov (United States)

Wynia, Matthew K; Johnson, Megan; McCoy, Thomas P; Griffin, Leah Passmore; Osborn, Chandra Y

2010-01-01

Effective communication is critical to providing quality health care and can be affected by a number of modifiable organizational factors. The authors performed a prospective multisite validation study of an organizational communication climate assessment tool in 13 geographically and ethnically diverse health care organizations. Communication climate was measured across 9 discrete domains. Patient and staff surveys with matched items in each domain were developed using a national consensus process, which then underwent psychometric field testing and assessment of domain coherence. The authors found meaningful within-site and between-site performance score variability in all domains. In multivariable models, most communication domains were significant predictors of patient-reported quality of care and trust. The authors conclude that these assessment tools provide a valid empirical assessment of organizational communication climate in 9 domains. Assessment results may be useful to track organizational performance, to benchmark, and to inform tailored quality improvement interventions.

Japan's Ambivalent Diplomacy on Climate Change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pajon, C.

2010-01-01

Japan often pictures itself as an environmental leader. While many examples of Japan's actions against climate change are in line with global climate change norms, others can be in opposition to them. This study, based on first hand interviews with Japanese policy makers and actors from the private and civil society sector, gives an informed perspective on the process through which Japan came to integrate and implement, at the domestic level, the international objective of climate change prevention, pointing out the discrepancies, tensions or synergies that emerged. As the current governance on climate change, and particularly after the Copenhagen conference, tends to reassert the importance of the national level against the global one, the Japanese case can serve as an example of tools and strategies that fully integrate the domestic level

EnviroAtlas: A Spatially Explicit Tool Combining Climate Change Scenarios with Ecosystem Services Indicators

Science.gov (United States)

While discussions of global climate change tend to center on greenhouse gases and seal level rise, other factors, such as technological developments, land and energy use, economics, and population growth all play a critical role in understanding climate change. There is increasi...

EnviroAtlas: A Spatially Explicit Tool Combining Climate Change Scenarios and Ecosystem ServicesIndicators

Science.gov (United States)

While discussions of global climate change tend to center on greenhouse gases and sea level rise, other factors, such as technological developments, land and energy use, economics, and population growth all play a critical role in understanding climate change. There is increasin...

Prospects of tools from differential games in the study of macroeconomics of climate change

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Engwerda, Jacob; Bernard, L.; Semmler, W.

2015-01-01

In this chapter we sketch a dynamic framework within which the discussion on the macro economic effects of climate change take place. The problem setting is characterized by scientific uncertainties about the development of climate, potential large economic losses, and specific characteristics of

Developing a module for estimating climate warming effects on hydropower pricing in California

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Guégan, Marion; Uvo, Cintia B.; Madani, Kaveh

2012-01-01

Climate warming is expected to alter hydropower generation in California through affecting the annual stream-flow regimes and reducing snowpack. On the other hand, increased temperatures are expected to increase hydropower demand for cooling in warm periods while decreasing demand for heating in winter, subsequently altering the annual hydropower pricing patterns. The resulting variations in hydropower supply and pricing regimes necessitate changes in reservoir operations to minimize the revenue losses from climate warming. Previous studies in California have only explored the effects of hydrological changes on hydropower generation and revenues. This study builds a long-term hydropower pricing estimation tool, based on artificial neural network (ANN), to develop pricing scenarios under different climate warming scenarios. Results suggest higher average hydropower prices under climate warming scenarios than under historical climate. The developed tool is integrated with California's Energy-Based Hydropower Optimization Model (EBHOM) to facilitate simultaneous consideration of climate warming on hydropower supply, demand and pricing. EBHOM estimates an additional 5% drop in annual revenues under a dry warming scenario when climate change impacts on pricing are considered, with respect to when such effects are ignored, underlining the importance of considering changes in hydropower demand and pricing in future studies and policy making. - Highlights: ► Addressing the major gap in previous climate change and hydropower studies in California. ► Developing an ANN-based long-term hydropower price estimation tool. ► Estimating climate change effects on hydropower demand and pricing in California. ► Investigating the sensitivity of hydropower operations to future price changes. ► Underlining the importance of consideration of climate change impacts on electricity pricing.

Climate Change Assessments for Lakes Region of Turkey

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ayten Erol

2012-07-01

Full Text Available Climate change is one of the most important challenges for forestry. Forests are known to be most efficient natural tools to ensure availability and quality of water in many regions. Besides, planning of forest resources towards water quality and quantity is essential in countries that are expected to face with more frequent drought periods in the next decades due to climate change. Watershed management concept has been supposed as the primary tool to plan natural resources in a more efficient and sustainable way by both academicians and practitioners to mitigate and adapt climate change. Forest cover among other land use types provides the best regulating mechanism to mitigate erosion, sedimentation, desertification, and pollution. In addition, climate change can potentially affect forest stand dynamics by influencing the availability of water resources. Therefore, the amount of forest cover in a watershed is an indicator of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Climate change is a concern and risk for the sustainability of water resources in Lakes Region of Turkey. The objective of this study is to make a comprehensive assessment in lake watersheds of the Lakes region considering the forest cover. For this purpose, the study gives a general view of trends in climatic parameters using Mann Kendall trend test. The results showed that Mann Kendall trend test for temperature and precipitation data is not enough to evaluate the magnitude of potential changes of climate in terms of forest cover. Understanding impacts of changes in temperature and precipitation on forest cover, runoff data should be evaluated with temperature and precipitation for watersheds of forest areas in Lakes Region.

To widen the action tools against the climatic change by domestic projects. Evaluation report; Elargir les instruments d'action contre le changement climatique grace aux projets domestiques. Rapport d'evaluation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Arnaud, E; Dominicis, A de; Leguet, B; Leseur, A; Perthuis, Ch de

2005-11-15

In the framework of the climatic change fight, each country aims to implement tools of emissions reduction. In France, the european system of CO{sub 2} quotas exchange, applied on the more emitted installations, covers less than 30% of the national carbon emissions. The other 70% are free of taxes. The 'climate mission' realized an evaluation of the emission reduction in the case of a new policy aiming to develop domestic projects of emission control. This report presents the study and its conclusions: the domestic projects, the possibilities of these projects in the transportation agriculture and forests and building sectors, the implementing conditions.

Prospects of Tools from Differential Games in the Study Of Macroeconomics of Climate Change

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Engwerda, J.C.

2012-01-01

Abstract: In this note we sketch a dynamic framework within which the discussion on the macro economic effects of climate change take place. The problem setting is characterized by scientific uncertainties about the development of climate, potential large economic losses and human beings having

Climate Change Adaptation Practices in Various Countries

Science.gov (United States)

Tanik, A.; Tekten, D.

2017-08-01

The paper will be a review work on the recent strategies of EU in general, and will underline the inspected sectoral based adaptation practices and action plans of 7 countries; namely Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, USA and Kenya from Africa continent. Although every countries’ action plan have some similarities on sectoral analysis, each country in accordance with the specific nature of the problem seems to create its own sectoral analysis. Within this context, green and white documents of EU adaptation to climate change, EU strategy on climate change, EU targets of 2020 on climate change and EU adaptation support tools are investigated.

Climate change scenario data for the national parks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Scott, D.

2003-01-01

This report presents daily scenario data obtained from monthly time scale climate change scenarios. The scenarios were applied to a stochastic weather generator, a statistical tool that simulates daily weather data for a range of climates at a particular location. The weather generators simulate weather that is statistically similar to observed climate data from climate stations. They can also generate daily scenario data for monthly time scales. This low cost computational method offers site-specific, multi-year climate change scenarios at a daily temporal level. The data is useful for situations that rely on climate thresholds such as forest fire season, drought conditions, or recreational season length. Data sets for temperature, precipitation and frost days was provided for 3 national parks for comparative evaluations. Daily scenarios for other parks can be derived using global climate model (GCM) output data through the Long Ashton Research Station (LARS) weather generator program. tabs

Scientific and practical tools for dealing with water resource estimations for the future

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

D. A. Hughes

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Future flow regimes will be different to today and imperfect knowledge of present and future climate variations, rainfall–runoff processes and anthropogenic impacts make them highly uncertain. Future water resources decisions will rely on practical and appropriate simulation tools that are sensitive to changes, can assimilate different types of change information and flexible enough to accommodate improvements in understanding of change. They need to include representations of uncertainty and generate information appropriate for uncertain decision-making. This paper presents some examples of the tools that have been developed to address these issues in the southern Africa region. The examples include uncertainty in present day simulations due to lack of understanding and data, using climate change projection data from multiple climate models and future catchment responses due to both climate and development effects. The conclusions are that the tools and models are largely available and what we need is more reliable forcing and model evlaution information as well as methods of making decisions with such inevitably uncertain information.

Coastal Risk Management in a Changing Climate

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Existing coastal management and defense approaches are not well suited to meet the challenges of climate change and related uncertanities. Professionals in this field need a more dynamic, systematic and multidisciplinary approach. Written by an international group of experts, "Coastal Risk...... Management in a Changing Climate" provides innovative, multidisciplinary best practices for mitigating the effects of climate change on coastal structures. Based on the Theseus program, the book includes eight study sites across Europe, with specific attention to the most vulnerable coastal environments...... such as deltas, estuaries and wetlands, where many large cities and industrial areas are located. Integrated risk assessment tools for considering the effects of climate change and related uncertainties. Presents latest insights on coastal engineering defenses. Provides integrated guidelines for setting up...

A Water Resources Planning Tool for the Jordan River Basin

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christopher Bonzi

2011-06-01

Full Text Available The Jordan River basin is subject to extreme and increasing water scarcity. Management of transboundary water resources in the basin is closely intertwined with political conflicts in the region. We have jointly developed with stakeholders and experts from the riparian countries, a new dynamic consensus database and—supported by hydro-climatological model simulations and participatory scenario exercises in the GLOWA (Global Change and the Hydrological Cycle Jordan River project—a basin-wide Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP tool, which will allow testing of various unilateral and multilateral adaptation options under climate and socio-economic change. We present its validation and initial (climate and socio-economic scenario analyses with this budget and allocation tool, and invite further adaptation and application of the tool for specific Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM problems.

The economics of climate change and the change of climate in economics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Marechal, Kevin

2007-01-01

Economics is an unavoidable decision-making tool in the field of climate policy. At the same time, traditional economics is being challenged both empirically and theoretically by scholars in different fields. Its non-neutrality in dealing with climate-related issues-which is illustrated by the controversy over the 'no-regret potential'-would thus call for an opening of economics to insights from other disciplines. Within that context, we show that an evolutionary-inspired line of thought coupled with a systemic and historical perspective of technological change provides a very insightful alternative to traditional economics. More particularly, it follows from that framework that the picture of the climate challenge ahead looks very different from what traditional economic analyses would suggest. For instance, the lock-in process makes it unlikely that traditional cost-efficient measures (such as carbon taxation or tradable emission rights) will be sufficient to bring about the required radical changes in the field of energy as they fail to address structural barriers highlighted in our approach

Changing climatic conditions in the Upper Thames River Basin

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Simonovic, S.P.

2009-01-01

'Full text:' Many climate change impact studies have been conducted using a top-down approach. First, outputs from Global Circulation Models (GCMs) are considered which are downscaled in a second step to the river basin scale using either a statistical/empirical or a dynamic approach. The local climatic signal that is obtained is then used as input into a hydrological model to assess the direct consequences in the basin. Problems related to this approach include: a high degree of uncertainty associated with GCM outputs; and an increase in uncertainty due to the downscaling approach. An original inverse approach is developed in this work in order to improve the understanding of the processes leading to hydrological hazards, including both flood and drought events. The developed approach starts with the analysis of existing guidelines and management practices in a river basin with respect to critical hydrological exposures that may lead to failure of the water resources system or parts thereof. This implies that vulnerable components of the river basin have to be identified together with the risk exposure. In the next step the critical hydrologic exposures (flood levels for example) are transformed into corresponding critical meteorological conditions (extreme precipitation events for example). These local weather scenarios are then be statistically linked to possible large-scale climate conditions that are available from the GCMs. The developed procedure allows for the assessment of the vulnerability of river basins with respect to climate forcing. It also provides a tool for identifying the spatial distribution of the vulnerability and risk. Vulnerability is here characterized by the incremental losses, expressed either quantitatively or qualitatively, due to a change in the probability and magnitude of hazard events driven by climatic forcing. Vulnerability is seen as the basis for risk mitigation measures for hydrologic extremes at the basin level. The

Educational and Scientific Applications of Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, S.; Pan, L.; Zhai, C.; Tang, B.; Kubar, T. L.; Zhang, J.; Bao, Q.

2016-12-01

Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer (CMDA) is a web-based information system designed for the climate modeling and model analysis community to analyze climate data from models and observations. CMDA provides tools to diagnostically analyze climate data for model validation and improvement, and to systematically manage analysis provenance for sharing results with other investigators. CMDA utilizes cloud computing resources, multi-threading computing, machine-learning algorithms, web service technologies, and provenance-supporting technologies to address technical challenges that the Earth science modeling and model analysis community faces in evaluating and diagnosing climate models. As CMDA infrastructure and technology have matured, we have developed the educational and scientific applications of CMDA. Educationally, CMDA supported the summer school of the JPL Center for Climate Sciences for three years since 2014. In the summer school, the students work on group research projects where CMDA provide datasets and analysis tools. Each student is assigned to a virtual machine with CMDA installed in Amazon Web Services. A provenance management system for CMDA is developed to keep track of students' usages of CMDA, and to recommend datasets and analysis tools for their research topic. The provenance system also allows students to revisit their analysis results and share them with their group. Scientifically, we have developed several science use cases of CMDA covering various topics, datasets, and analysis types. Each use case developed is described and listed in terms of a scientific goal, datasets used, the analysis tools used, scientific results discovered from the use case, an analysis result such as output plots and data files, and a link to the exact analysis service call with all the input arguments filled. For example, one science use case is the evaluation of NCAR CAM5 model with MODIS total cloud fraction. The analysis service used is Difference Plot Service of

Modeling Past Abrupt Climate Changes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Marchionne, Arianna

of the orbital variations on Earth's climate; however, the knowledge and tools needed to complete a unied theory for ice ages have not been developed yet. Here, we focus on the climatic variations that have occurred over the last few million years. Paleoclimatic records show that the glacial cycles are linked...... to those present in the astronomical forcing. We shall do this in terms of a general framework of conceptual dynamical models, which may or may not exhibit internal self-sustained oscillations. We introduce and discuss two distinct mechanisms for a periodic response at a dierent period to a periodic...

Can role-play with interactive simulations enhance climate change knowledge, affect and intent to act?

Science.gov (United States)

Rooney-varga, J. N.; Sterman, J.; Fracassi, E. P.; Franck, T.; Kapmeier, F.; Kurker, V.; Jones, A.; Rath, K.

2017-12-01

The strong scientific consensus about the reality and risks of anthropogenic climate change stands in stark contrast to widespread confusion and complacency among the public. Many efforts to close that gap, grounded in the information deficit model of risk communication, provide scientific information on climate change through reports and presentations. However, research shows that showing people research does not work: the gap between scientific and public understanding of climate change remains wide. Tools that are rigorously grounded in the science and motivate action on climate change are urgently needed. Here we assess the impact of one such tool, an interactive, role-play simulation, World Climate. Participants take the roles of delegates to the UN climate negotiations and are challenged to create an agreement limiting warming to no more than 2°C. The C-ROADS climate simulation model then provides participants with immediate feedback about the expected impacts of their decisions. Participants use C-ROADS to explore the climate system and use the results to refine their negotiating positions, learning about climate change while experiencing the social dynamics of negotiations and decision-making. Pre- and post-survey results from 21 sessions in eight nations showed significant gains in participants' climate change knowledge, affective engagement, intent to take action, and desire to learn. Contrary to the deficit model, gains in participants' desire to learn more and intention to act were associated with gains in affective engagement, particularly feelings of urgency and hope, but not climate knowledge. Gains were just as strong among participants who oppose government regulation, suggesting the simulation's potential to reach across political divides. Results indicate that simulations like World Climate offer a climate change communication tool that enables people to learn and feel for themselves, which together have the potential to motivate action informed

Distributed Generation to Support Development-Focused Climate Action

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cox, Sadie; Gagnon, Pieter; Stout, Sherry; Zinaman, Owen; Watson, Andrea; Hotchkiss, Eliza

2016-09-01

This paper explores the role of distributed generation, with a high renewable energy contribution, in supporting low emission climate-resilient development. The paper presents potential impacts on development (via energy access), greenhouse gas emission mitigation, and climate resilience directly associated with distributed generation, as well as specific actions that may enhance or increase the likelihood of climate and development benefits. This paper also seeks to provide practical and timely insights to support distributed generation policymaking and planning within the context of common climate and development goals as the distributed generation landscape rapidly evolves globally. Country-specific distributed generation policy and program examples, as well as analytical tools that can inform efforts internationally, are also highlighted throughout the paper.

Undergraduate Students as Climate Communicators

Science.gov (United States)

Sharif, H. O.; Joseph, J.; Mullendore, G. L.

2012-12-01

The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), San Antonio College (SAC), and the University of North Dakota (UND) are partnering with NASA to provide underrepresented undergraduates from UTSA, SAC, and other community colleges climate-related research and education experiences. The program aims to develop a robust response to climate change by providing K-16 climate change education; enhance the effectiveness of K-16 education particularly in engineering and other STEM disciplines by use of new instructional technologies; increase the enrollment in engineering programs and the number of engineering degrees awarded by showing engineering's usefulness in relation to the much-discussed contemporary issue of climate change; increase persistence in STEM degrees by providing student research opportunities; and increase the ethnic diversity of those receiving engineering degrees and help ensure an ethnically diverse response to climate change. Students will have the opportunity to participate in guided research experiences aligned with NASA Science Plan objectives for climate and Earth system science and the educational objectives of the three institutions. An integral part of the learning process will include training in modern media technology (webcasts), and in using this technology to communicate the information on climate change to others, especially high school students, culminating in production of a webcast about investigating aspects of climate change using NASA data. Content developed is leveraged by NASA Earth observation data and NASA Earth system models and tools. Several departments are involved in the educational program.

Visualizing projected Climate Changes - the CMIP5 Multi-Model Ensemble

Science.gov (United States)

Böttinger, Michael; Eyring, Veronika; Lauer, Axel; Meier-Fleischer, Karin

2017-04-01

Large ensembles add an additional dimension to climate model simulations. Internal variability of the climate system can be assessed for example by multiple climate model simulations with small variations in the initial conditions or by analyzing the spread in large ensembles made by multiple climate models under common protocols. This spread is often used as a measure of uncertainty in climate projections. In the context of the fifth phase of the WCRP's Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), more than 40 different coupled climate models were employed to carry out a coordinated set of experiments. Time series of the development of integral quantities such as the global mean temperature change for all models visualize the spread in the multi-model ensemble. A similar approach can be applied to 2D-visualizations of projected climate changes such as latitude-longitude maps showing the multi-model mean of the ensemble by adding a graphical representation of the uncertainty information. This has been demonstrated for example with static figures in chapter 12 of the last IPCC report (AR5) using different so-called stippling and hatching techniques. In this work, we focus on animated visualizations of multi-model ensemble climate projections carried out within CMIP5 as a way of communicating climate change results to the scientific community as well as to the public. We take a closer look at measures of robustness or uncertainty used in recent publications suitable for animated visualizations. Specifically, we use the ESMValTool [1] to process and prepare the CMIP5 multi-model data in combination with standard visualization tools such as NCL and the commercial 3D visualization software Avizo to create the animations. We compare different visualization techniques such as height fields or shading with transparency for creating animated visualization of ensemble mean changes in temperature and precipitation including corresponding robustness measures. [1] Eyring, V

Coupling a global climatic model with insurance impact models for flood and drought: an estimation of the financial impact of climate change

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tinard Pierre

2016-01-01

Full Text Available CCR, a French reinsurance company mostly involved in natural disasters coverage in France, has been developing tools for the estimation of its exposure to climatic risks for many years. Both a flood and a drought models were developed and calibrated on a large policies and claims database supplied every year with insurers’ data. More recently, CCR has been developing a stochastic approach in order to evaluate its financial exposure to extreme events. A large and realistic event set has been generated by applying extreme value statistic tools to simulate hazard and to estimate, using our impact models, the average annual losses and losses related to different return periods. These event sets have been simulated separately for flood and drought, with a hypothesis of independence, consistent with recent annual damage data. The newest development presented here consists in the use of the ARPEGE–Climat model performed by Météo-France to simulate two 200-years sets of hourly atmospheric time series reflecting both the current climate and the RCP 4.5 climate conditions circa year 2050. These climatic data constitute the input data for the flood and drought impact models to detect events and simulate the associated hazard and damages. Our two main goals are (1 to simulate simultaneously flood and drought events for the same simulated years and (2 to evaluate the financial impact of climate change.

Southern voices on climate policy choices: Analysis of and lessons learned from civil society advocacy on climate change

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Reid, Hannah; Ampomah, Gifty; Prera, Maria Isabel Olazabal; Rabbani, Golam; Zvigadza, Shepard

2012-05-15

This report provides an analysis of the tools and tactics advocacy groups use to influence policy responses to climate change at international, regional, national and sub-national levels. More than 20 climate networks and their member organisations have contributed to the report with their experiences of advocacy on climate change, including over 70 case studies from a wide range of countries - including many of the poorest - in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. These advocacy activities primarily target national governments, but also international and regional processes, donors and the private sector. Analyses and case studies show how civil society plays key roles in pushing for new laws, programmes, policies or strategies on climate change, in holding governments to account on their commitments; in identifying the lack of joined-up government responses to climate change; and in ensuring that national policy making does not forget the poor and vulnerable. The report is the first joint product of the Southern Voices Capacity Building Programme, or for short: Southern Voices on Climate Change.

Appendix 2. Guide for Running AgMIP Climate Scenario Generation Tools with R in Windows, Version 2.3

Science.gov (United States)

Hudson, Nicholas; Ruane, Alexander Clark

2013-01-01

This Guide explains how to create climate series and climate change scenarios by using the AgMip Climate team's methodology as outlined in the AgMIP Guide for Regional Assessment: Handbook of Methods and Procedures. It details how to: install R and the required packages to run the AgMIP Climate Scenario Generation scripts, and create climate scenarios from CMIP5 GCMs using a 30-year baseline daily weather dataset. The Guide also outlines a workflow that can be modified for application to your own climate data.

Idiocultural Design as a Tool of Cultural Psychology.

Science.gov (United States)

Cole, Michael

2017-09-01

The study of small group idiocultures offers a productive way to study the role of culture in human cognitive and social development. My evidence is drawn from a multi-decade long study of groups of mixed-aged participants engaged in deliberately designed forms of joint activity taking place several times a week over periods extending over decades in a variety of institutional settings. In each such system, participants ranging from middle childhood to adulthood participate in an after-school program composed of a wide variety of games brought together in a fantasy world watched over by a Wizard. Insights offered by this approach include comparative analysis of skill development in different idiocultural systems, intergenerational changes in the local cultural systems themselves, and intra-cultural variations in the behavioral changes of individual children occurring over different time scales. Implications of this comparative approach for psychology science are discussed.

Point Climat no. 33 'International Climate Negotiations - COP 19: do not underestimate the MRV breakthrough'

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dupont, Marion; Morel, Romain; Bellassen, Valentin; Deheza, Mariana

2013-01-01

Among the publications of CDC Climat Research, 'Climate Briefs' presents, in a few pages, hot topics in climate change policy. This issue addresses the following points: For those who expect 'binding' emission reductions targets in the future international climate agreement to be signed in Paris in 2015, the Warsaw Conference (November 11 to 23, 2013) yielded as much progress as it could. That means little beyond a timetable. However, for those who consider the UNFCCC as the depository of common tools on the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions, actions and financing, Warsaw represents a major breakthrough. For the first time, developing countries - at least those wishing to access climate finance for forests - will abide by MRV procedures similar to those governing the greenhouse gas inventories of industrialized countries. Forestry may be seen as a first sectoral NAMA, and it would be difficult to ignore the Warsaw decisions for the future definition of MRV procedures of NAMAs. In spite of the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, low outputs on other issues show that achieving an agreement at COP 21 will require significant political progress during the next 15 months

Integrating adaptive governance and participatory multicriteria methods: a framework for climate adaptation governance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stefania Munaretto

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Climate adaptation is a dynamic social and institutional process where the governance dimension is receiving growing attention. Adaptive governance is an approach that promises to reduce uncertainty by improving the knowledge base for decision making. As uncertainty is an inherent feature of climate adaptation, adaptive governance seems to be a promising approach for improving climate adaptation governance. However, the adaptive governance literature has so far paid little attention to decision-making tools and methods, and the literature on the governance of adaptation is in its infancy in this regard. We argue that climate adaptation governance would benefit from systematic and yet flexible decision-making tools and methods such as participatory multicriteria methods for the evaluation of adaptation options, and that these methods can be linked to key adaptive governance principles. Moving from these premises, we propose a framework that integrates key adaptive governance features into participatory multicriteria methods for the governance of climate adaptation.

Facilitating climate change adaptation through communication

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Glaas, Erik; Gammelgaard Ballantyne, Anne; Neset, Tina Simone

2015-01-01

with the context of the target audience, provides intelligible information and addresses perceived barriers to adaptation. In this paper we reflect upon criteria for useful climate change communication gained over a three year development process of a web-based tool - VisAdapt™ - aimed at increasing...

Young Voices on Climate Change: The Paul F-Brandwein 2010 NSTA Lecture

Science.gov (United States)

Cherry, Lynne

2011-04-01

Lynne Cherry Brandwein Lecture March 2010 National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Conference, Philadelphia, PA. Young Voices on Climate Change: Inspired and Empowered Youth Tackle Climate Science and Find Climate Solutions. As a child, Lynne Cherry was profoundly connected to the natural world and a special place. She watched the destruction of her world. Now, through her Young Voices on Climate Change project, she is trying to give teachers and young people the tools to prevent planetary meltdown on a greater scale. Global climate change is upon us and the need for education and action is immediate. Outreach, visual storytelling, and scientific understanding are especially necessary in light of the recent polls that show that the public is becoming more confused and less concerned about climate change. Cherry's climate book, co-authored with photojournalist Gary Braasch, and her Young Voices on Climate Change films feature climate solutions. They're about win-win—save the environment, protect human health, reduce global warming gases, demonstrate youth making a difference with practical tools, motivate engagement in climate science, take pride in increased science literacy, reach young people through their hearts as well as their minds, and save money. Although young people can help their parents, peers and communities understand climate science, they can also show them that reducing CO2 is in their economic interest, and spur them to take action. School carbon reduction initiatives are spilling over into communities yielding measurable results in both global warming gas reductions and significant monetary savings.

Handling Interdependencies in Climate Change Risk Assessment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Richard J. Dawson

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Typically, a climate change risk assessment focuses on individual sectors or hazards. However, interdependencies between climate risks manifest themselves via functional, physical, geographical, economic, policy and social mechanisms. These can occur over a range of spatial or temporal scales and with different strengths of coupling. Three case studies are used to demonstrate how interdependencies can significantly alter the nature and magnitude of risk, and, consequently, investment priorities for adaptation. The three examples explore interdependencies that arise from (1 climate loading dependence; (2 mediation of two climate impacts by physical processes operating over large spatial extents; and, (3 multiple risks that are influenced by shared climatic and socio-economic drivers. Drawing upon learning from these case studies, and other work, a framework for the analysis and consideration of interdependencies in climate change risk assessment has been developed. This is an iterative learning loop that involves defining the system, scoping interaction mechanisms, applying appropriate modelling tools, identifying vulnerabilities and opportunities, and assessing the performance of adaptation interventions.

The Climate-G testbed: towards a large scale data sharing environment for climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Aloisio, G.; Fiore, S.; Denvil, S.; Petitdidier, M.; Fox, P.; Schwichtenberg, H.; Blower, J.; Barbera, R.

2009-04-01

The Climate-G testbed provides an experimental large scale data environment for climate change addressing challenging data and metadata management issues. The main scope of Climate-G is to allow scientists to carry out geographical and cross-institutional climate data discovery, access, visualization and sharing. Climate-G is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving both climate and computer scientists and it currently involves several partners such as: Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace (IPSL), Fraunhofer Institut für Algorithmen und Wissenschaftliches Rechnen (SCAI), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), University of Reading, University of Catania and University of Salento. To perform distributed metadata search and discovery, we adopted a CMCC metadata solution (which provides a high level of scalability, transparency, fault tolerance and autonomy) leveraging both on P2P and grid technologies (GRelC Data Access and Integration Service). Moreover, data are available through OPeNDAP/THREDDS services, Live Access Server as well as the OGC compliant Web Map Service and they can be downloaded, visualized, accessed into the proposed environment through the Climate-G Data Distribution Centre (DDC), the web gateway to the Climate-G digital library. The DDC is a data-grid portal allowing users to easily, securely and transparently perform search/discovery, metadata management, data access, data visualization, etc. Godiva2 (integrated into the DDC) displays 2D maps (and animations) and also exports maps for display on the Google Earth virtual globe. Presently, Climate-G publishes (through the DDC) about 2TB of data related to the ENSEMBLES project (also including distributed replicas of data) as well as to the IPCC AR4. The main results of the proposed work are: wide data access/sharing environment for climate change; P2P/grid metadata approach; production-level Climate-G DDC; high quality tools for

From macroeconomics of energy-climate policies to the convergence between climate and development

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mathy, Sandrine

2016-01-01

After a brief presentation of her research curriculum, an indication of her various publications and contributions to conferences, the author presents her expertise works and her participation to national and international projects such as: Fairness in the post-2030 climatic regime, Towards an energetic autonomy in island and isolated territories, scenarios under a carbon constraint, comparative analysis of tools of implementation of multilateral agreements on the environment, mechanism for a clean development and domestic measures, Deep De-carbonation Pathway Project or DDPP, EncilowCarb engaging civil society in low carbon scenarios, climate and development or how to re-conciliate environmental constraints and national development policies, Developmental additionnality of the Clean Development Mechanism and public aid to development. In the next part, she proposes an overview of her research works by distinguishing two directions: a macro-economic analysis of climate policies integrating second raw elements (Imaclim-R France), and strategies of struggle against climate change integrated into development policies. In a third part, she discusses research perspectives regarding energy transition and natural resources, mankind in the energy transition, and the citizen (scenarios, democracy and energy transition) [fr

Climate Literacy: STEM and Climate Change Education and Remote Sensing Applications

Science.gov (United States)

Reddy, S. R.

2015-12-01

NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) is a competitive project to promote climate and Earth system science literacy and seeks to increase the access of underrepresented minority groups to science careers and educational opportunities. A three year funding was received from NASA to partnership with JSU and MSU under cooperative agreement "Strengthening Global Climate Change education through Remote Sensing Application in Coastal Environment using NASA Satellite Data and Models". The goal is to increase the number of highschool and undergraduate students at Jackson State University, a Historically Black University, who are prepared to pursue higher academic degrees and careers in STEM fields. A five Saturday course/workshop was held during March/April 2015 at JSU, focusing on historical and technical concepts of math, enginneering, technology and atmosphere and climate change and remote sensing technology and applications to weather and climate. Nine students from meteorology, biology, industrial technology and computer science/engineering of JSU and 19 high scool students from Jackson Public Schools participated in the course/workshop. The lecture topics include: introduction to remote sensing and GIS, introduction to atmospheric science, math and engineering, climate, introduction to NASA innovations in climate education, introduction to remote sensing technology for bio-geosphere, introduction to earth system science, principles of paleoclimatology and global change, daily weather briefing, satellite image interpretation and so on. In addition to lectures, lab sessions were held for hand-on experiences for remote sensing applications to atmosphere, biosphere, earth system science and climate change using ERDAS/ENVI GIS software and satellite tools. Field trip to Barnett reservoir and National weather Service (NWS) was part of the workshop. Basics of Earth System Science is a non-mathematical introductory course designed for high school seniors, high school

Risk management perspective for climate service development - Results from a study on Finnish organizations

Science.gov (United States)

Harjanne, Atte; Haavisto, Riina; Tuomenvirta, Heikki; Gregow, Hilppa

2017-10-01

Weather, climate and climate change can cause significant risks to businesses and public administration. However, understanding these processes can also create opportunities. Information can help to manage these risks and opportunities, but in order to do so, it must be in line with how risk management and decision making works. To better understand how climate risks and opportunities are reflected in different organizational processes and what types of information is needed and used, we conducted a study on the perceptions and management of weather and climate risks in Finnish organizations and on their use of weather and climate information. In addition, we collected feedback on how the existing climate information tools should be developed. Data on climate risk management was collected in an online survey and in one full-day workshop. The survey was aimed to the Finnish public and private organizations who use weather and climate data and altogether 118 responses were collected. The workshop consisted of two parts: weather and climate risk management processes in general and the development of the current information tools to further address user needs.We found that climate risk management in organizations is quite diverse and often de-centralized and that external experts are considered the most useful sources of information. Consequently, users emphasize the need for networks of expertise and sector-specific information tools. Creating such services requires input and information sharing from the user side as well. Better temporal and spatial accuracy is naturally asked for, but users also stressed the need for transparency when it comes to communicating uncertainties, and the availability and up-to-datedness of information. Our results illustrate that weather and climate risks compete and blend in with other risks and changes perceived by the organizations and supporting information is sought from different types of sources. Thus the design and evaluation of

Species distributions and climate change - linking the past and the future

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Levinsky, Irina

Climate change is predicted to have a marked impact on biodiversity, and changes in the distributions of numerous species have already been correlated with ongoing climate change. Climatic oscillations, however, were also the rule during the Pleistocene, and a look to the past may therefore shed ...... conditions during the Last Glacial Maximum, explore surrogates for the dispersal ability of African starlings and critically assess the tools I use and the assumptions behind them....

48 CFR 52.211-2 - Availability of Specifications, Standards, and Data Item Descriptions Listed in the Acquisition...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

... ASSIST websites: (1) ASSIST (http://assist.daps.dla.mil); (2) Quick Search (http://assist.daps.dla.mil/quicksearch); (3) ASSISTdocs.com (http://assistdocs.com). (b) Documents not available from ASSIST may be... Wizard (http://assist.daps.dla.mil/wizard); (2) Phoning the DoDSSP Customer Service Desk (215) 697-2179...

Developing the architecture for the Climate Information Portal for Copernicus

Science.gov (United States)

Som de Cerff, Wim; Thijsse, Peter; Plieger, Maarten; Pascoe, Stephen; Jukes, Martin; Leadbetter, Adam; Goosen, Hasse; de Vreede, Ernst

2015-04-01

/re-using existing processing services from climate4impact.eu. The processing services will allow users to calculate climate impact indicators (Tier 1, 2 and 3). Processing wizards will guide users in processing indicators. The PyWPS framework will be used. The CLIPC portal will have its own central viewing service, using OGC standards for interoperability. For the WMS server side the ADAGUC framework will be used. For Tier 3 visualizations specific tailored visualisations will be developed. Tier 3 can be complicated to build and require manual work from specialists to provide meaningful results before they can be published as e.g. interactive maps. The CLIPC knowledge base is a set of services that supply explanatory information to the users when working with CLIPC services. It is structured around 1) a catalogue, containing ISO standardized metadata, citations, background information, links to data; 2) Commentary information, e.g. FAQ, annotation URLs , version information, disclaimers; 3) Technical documents, e.g. using vocabularies and mappings 4) Glossaries, adding and using existing glossaries from e.g. EUPORIAS/IS-ENES, IPCC; 5) literature references. CLIPC will have a very light weight user management system, providing as little barriers to the user as possible. We will make use of OpenID, accepting from selected OpenID providers such as Google and ESGF. In the presentation we will show the storyline implementation: the first results of the Tier 3 indicator, the architecture in development and the lessons learned.

When the circus comes to town: Countering campus presentations on climate denial

Science.gov (United States)

Corbin, J.

2012-12-01

A key element of the corporate and conservative campaign to discredit climate science has been public presentations by high-profile climate change deniers who offer "the real view" of climate science. While such speakers often intend to muddy the waters with respect to climate science, they can also serve as an initiative to highlight the widely accepted facts of climate change and the nature of scientific consensus on the topic. Our experience, based on a visit by Christopher Monckton to Union College, is that the attention and publicity surrounding such events can have a positive impact by raising the profile of climate science and engaging a wider audience than would otherwise be possible. The principle lesson from our experience is that our students are some of the most effective counters to such presentations by climate change deniers. Students at Union College worked with faculty to organize sophisticated presentations and forums to present a coherent message about the science of climate change. They engaged with Monckton during his presentation and in a follow-up forum, used social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to communicate with one another and with their peers, and displayed highly sophisticated critical thinking skills. Above all, they had the passion and energy to organize, to engage with a high-profile speaker, and to rebut arguments that misrepresented the state of climate science. While we had effectively used social media tools to organize and communicate within our own communities, we were subject to a well-organized campaign that used those same tools to discredit our efforts. Links to coverage of the event in our campus newspaper were shared worldwide via Twitter and Facebook, and we were flooded with messages from people with no campus connection. The event was also featured, along with derogatory descriptions of organizers, at the website Wattsupwiththat and a contribution by Monckton to the Financial Post. We would have

Accommodating the Challenges of Climate Change Adaptation and Governance in Conventional Risk Management: Adaptive Collaborative Risk Management (ACRM)

OpenAIRE

Bradley May; Ryan Plummer

2011-01-01

Risk management is a well established tool for climate change adaptation. It is facing new challenges with the end of climate stationarity and the need to meaningfully engage people in governance issues. The ways in which conventional approaches to risk management can respond to these challenges are explored. Conventional approaches to risk management are summarized, the manner in which they are being advanced as a tool for climate change adaptation is described, and emerging themes in risk m...

Animal Agriculture in a Changing Climate Online Course: An Effective Tool for Creating Extension Competency

Science.gov (United States)

Whitefield, Elizabeth; Schmidt, David; Witt-Swanson, Lindsay; Smith, David; Pronto, Jennifer; Knox, Pam; Powers, Crystal

2016-01-01

There is a need to create competency among Extension professionals on the topic of climate change adaptation and mitigation in animal agriculture. The Animal Agriculture in a Changing Climate online course provides an easily accessible, user-friendly, free, and interactive experience for learning science-based information on a national and…

Climate Risk Assessment: Technical Guidance Manual for DoD Installations and Built Environment

Science.gov (United States)

2016-09-06

United States Geological Service VBA Visual Basic for Applications (programming language) VIC The Variable Infiltration Capacity hydrologic model...specialists with good understanding of the specific system being investigated. Available climate information products can be accessed to provide...BOX 3 – CLIMATE INFORMATION PRODUCTS There are a number of tools available that provide easy access to a range of climate information products. For

Climate Change Risk Management Consulting: The opportunity for an independent business practice

Science.gov (United States)

Ciccozzi, R.

2009-04-01

The Paper outlines the main questions to be addressed with reference to the actual demand of climate change risk management consulting, in the financial services. Moreover, the Project shall also try to investigate if the Catastrophe Modelling Industry can start and manage a business practice specialised on climate change risk exposures. In this context, the Paper aims at testing the possibility to build a sound business case, based upon typical MBA course analysis tools, such as PEST(LE), SWOT, etc. Specific references to the tools to be used and to other contribution from academic literature and general documentation are also discussed in the body of the Paper and listed at the end. The analysis shall also focus on the core competencies required for an independent climate change risk management consulting business practice, with the purpose to outline a valid definition of how to achieve competitive advantage in climate change risk management consulting.

GC31G-1182: Opennex, a Private-Public Partnership in Support of the National Climate Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Nemani, Ramakrishna R.; Wang, Weile; Michaelis, Andrew; Votava, Petr; Ganguly, Sangram

2016-01-01

The NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) is a collaborative computing platform that has been developed with the objective of bringing scientists together with the software tools, massive global datasets, and supercomputing resources necessary to accelerate research in Earth systems science and global change. NEX is funded as an enabling tool for sustaining the national climate assessment. Over the past five years, researchers have used the NEX platform and produced a number of data sets highly relevant to the National Climate Assessment. These include high-resolution climate projections using different downscaling techniques and trends in historical climate from satellite data. To enable a broader community in exploiting the above datasets, the NEX team partnered with public cloud providers to create the OpenNEX platform. OpenNEX provides ready access to NEX data holdings on a number of public cloud platforms along with pertinent analysis tools and workflows in the form of Machine Images and Docker Containers, lectures and tutorials by experts. We will showcase some of the applications of OpenNEX data and tools by the community on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and the NEX Sandbox.

Risk Formulations versus Comprehensive Uncertainty Characterizations for Climate Extremes and their Impacts

Science.gov (United States)

Parish, E. S.; Ganguly, A. R.

2009-12-01

Climate extremes—defined inclusively as extreme hydro-metrological events and regional changes in climate patterns at decadal scales—and their impacts on natural, engineered or human systems, represent among the most significant knowledge-gaps in climate prediction and integrated assessments in a post-AR4 world. Risks and uncertainties are related but distinct concepts. However, their relevance to decision-support tools in the context of climate change is indisputable. The opportunities and challenges are presented with case studies developed for stakeholders and policy makers.

MEGAPOLI: concept of multi-scale modelling of megacity impact on air quality and climate

Science.gov (United States)

Baklanov, A.; Lawrence, M.; Pandis, S.; Mahura, A.; Finardi, S.; Moussiopoulos, N.; Beekmann, M.; Laj, P.; Gomes, L.; Jaffrezo, J.-L.; Borbon, A.; Coll, I.; Gros, V.; Sciare, J.; Kukkonen, J.; Galmarini, S.; Giorgi, F.; Grimmond, S.; Esau, I.; Stohl, A.; Denby, B.; Wagner, T.; Butler, T.; Baltensperger, U.; Builtjes, P.; van den Hout, D.; van der Gon, H. D.; Collins, B.; Schluenzen, H.; Kulmala, M.; Zilitinkevich, S.; Sokhi, R.; Friedrich, R.; Theloke, J.; Kummer, U.; Jalkinen, L.; Halenka, T.; Wiedensholer, A.; Pyle, J.; Rossow, W. B.

2010-11-01

The EU FP7 Project MEGAPOLI: "Megacities: Emissions, urban, regional and Global Atmospheric POLlution and climate effects, and Integrated tools for assessment and mitigation" (http://megapoli.info) brings together leading European research groups, state-of-the-art scientific tools and key players from non-European countries to investigate the interactions among megacities, air quality and climate. MEGAPOLI bridges the spatial and temporal scales that connect local emissions, air quality and weather with global atmospheric chemistry and climate. The suggested concept of multi-scale integrated modelling of megacity impact on air quality and climate and vice versa is discussed in the paper. It requires considering different spatial and temporal dimensions: time scales from seconds and hours (to understand the interaction mechanisms) up to years and decades (to consider the climate effects); spatial resolutions: with model down- and up-scaling from street- to global-scale; and two-way interactions between meteorological and chemical processes.

THE REGRESSION MODEL OF IRAN LIBRARIES ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE

OpenAIRE

Jahani, Mohammad Ali; Yaminfirooz, Mousa; Siamian, Hasan

2015-01-01

Background: The purpose of this study was to drawing a regression model of organizational climate of central libraries of Iran?s universities. Methods: This study is an applied research. The statistical population of this study consisted of 96 employees of the central libraries of Iran?s public universities selected among the 117 universities affiliated to the Ministry of Health by Stratified Sampling method (510 people). Climate Qual localized questionnaire was used as research tools. For pr...

Climate Generation: Advancing Climate Action through Education, Public Engagement and Youth Leadership

Science.gov (United States)

Poppleton, K. L. I.

2017-12-01

Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy empowers youth, educators, decision-makers and the public to foster climate literacy and action with the goal of building a more equitable and resilient future. We have over eleven years of experience delivering high-quality K-12 education, public engagement and youth leadership programming, reaching over 75,000 people, 35,000 students and 17,000 educators since 2006. By engaging educators, youth, and the public, we believe that communities can be better positioned to build a resilient and equitable future. For this reason we strive to engage with all these sectors through innovative programming and policy initiatives. Communities are resilient when individuals are connected to each other, resources, and decision-makers. Sharing personal narratives, and highlighting locally relevant solutions are all tools that Climate Generation employs to engage the public. We do this through community wide convenings, as well as sector specific events including at breweries, art fairs, and businesses. Education is also an integral piece for sustained action on climate change. We support educators with a science-based, interdisciplinary model of climate change education that engages all learners, and fosters climate literacy and action. We develop curriculum and offer professional development, encouraging teachers to develop today's students into action-competent citizens. Finally, Climate Generation recognizes the importance of empowering high school youth as a key strategy in transitioning to a just and sustainable future for all. We believe in the inherent genius of youth and know from experience that mentorship fosters powerful youth leadership at the community level, inspiring peers, family members, and local decision-makers to take critical action on climate change solutions. In order to accelerate and implement action on climate change we must take a multi-faceted approach: we are building public will for strong climate action at

Climate Literacy: Climate.gov Follow-Up Evaluation—A Study of the Four NOAA Audiences

Science.gov (United States)

Niepold, F., III; Sullivan, S. B.; Gold, A. U.; Lynds, S. E.; Kirk, K.

2014-12-01

NOAA Climate.gov provides science and information for a climate-smart nation. Americans' health, security, and economic well-being are closely linked to climate and weather. NOAA Climate.gov's goals are to promote public understanding of climate science and climate-related events, to make our data products and services easy to access and use, to support educators in improving the nations climate literacy, and to serve people making climate-related decisions with tools and resources that help them answer specific questions.The Climate.Gov Follow-Up Study of the four NOAA Audiences (climate interested public, educators, scientists, policy-makers) built upon the previous literature review and evaluation study conducted by Mooney and Phillips in 2010 and 2012, http://tinyurl.com/ma8vo83. The CIRES Education and Outreach team at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at University of Colorado at Boulder and the NOAA Climate.gov team will present results of the new study that used the Quality of Relationship index (awareness, trust, satisfaction, usability, and control mutuality). This index was developed in the previous study and places a new emphasis on the experience of individual users from the four audiences in their regular work or home setting. This new evaluation project used mixed methods, including an online survey, usability studies, phone interviews, and web statistics, providing multiple lines of evidence from which to draw conclusion and recommendations.In the session, we will explore how the NOAA Climate.gov teams used the literature review and new CIRES research to address underlying challenges to achieving the portal's goals. The research in these studies finds that people seek information in ways that are complex and that they do so by consulting a vast array of technologies. Improved and different modes of access to information have, throughout history, been led by technological innovation, but human behavior tends to be

Tool or Toy? Virtual Globes in Landscape Planning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stephen R. J. Sheppard

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Virtual globes, i.e., geobrowsers that integrate multi-scale and temporal data from various sources and are based on a globe metaphor, have developed into serious tools that practitioners and various stakeholders in landscape and community planning have started using. Although these tools originate from Geographic Information Systems (GIS, they have become a different, potentially interactive and public tool set, with their own specific limitations and new opportunities. Expectations regarding their utility as planning and community engagement tools are high, but are tempered by both technical limitations and ethical issues [1,2]. Two grassroots campaigns and a collaborative visioning process, the Kimberley Climate Adaptation Project case study (British Columbia, illustrate and broaden our understanding of the potential benefits and limitations associated with the use of virtual globes in participatory planning initiatives. Based on observations, questionnaires and in-depth interviews with stakeholders and community members using an interactive 3D model of regional climate change vulnerabilities, potential impacts, and possible adaptation and mitigation scenarios in Kimberley, the benefits and limitations of virtual globes as a tool for participatory landscape planning are discussed. The findings suggest that virtual globes can facilitate access to geospatial information, raise awareness, and provide a more representative virtual landscape than static visualizations. However, landscape is not equally representative at all scales, and not all types of users seem to benefit equally from the tool. The risks of misinterpretation can be managed by integrating the application and interpretation of virtual globes into face-to-face planning processes.

Climate Change | Page 79 | IDRC - International Development ...

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

Climate Change. Changements climatiques. Language English. The Kenya Medical Research Institute has launched a tool aimed at predicting malaria outbreaks in any area ... Environmental economics can identify the underlying causes of environmental problems and point to solutions that benefit people and the planet.

GenomeCAT: a versatile tool for the analysis and integrative visualization of DNA copy number variants.

Science.gov (United States)

Tebel, Katrin; Boldt, Vivien; Steininger, Anne; Port, Matthias; Ebert, Grit; Ullmann, Reinhard

2017-01-06

The analysis of DNA copy number variants (CNV) has increasing impact in the field of genetic diagnostics and research. However, the interpretation of CNV data derived from high resolution array CGH or NGS platforms is complicated by the considerable variability of the human genome. Therefore, tools for multidimensional data analysis and comparison of patient cohorts are needed to assist in the discrimination of clinically relevant CNVs from others. We developed GenomeCAT, a standalone Java application for the analysis and integrative visualization of CNVs. GenomeCAT is composed of three modules dedicated to the inspection of single cases, comparative analysis of multidimensional data and group comparisons aiming at the identification of recurrent aberrations in patients sharing the same phenotype, respectively. Its flexible import options ease the comparative analysis of own results derived from microarray or NGS platforms with data from literature or public depositories. Multidimensional data obtained from different experiment types can be merged into a common data matrix to enable common visualization and analysis. All results are stored in the integrated MySQL database, but can also be exported as tab delimited files for further statistical calculations in external programs. GenomeCAT offers a broad spectrum of visualization and analysis tools that assist in the evaluation of CNVs in the context of other experiment data and annotations. The use of GenomeCAT does not require any specialized computer skills. The various R packages implemented for data analysis are fully integrated into GenomeCATs graphical user interface and the installation process is supported by a wizard. The flexibility in terms of data import and export in combination with the ability to create a common data matrix makes the program also well suited as an interface between genomic data from heterogeneous sources and external software tools. Due to the modular architecture the functionality of

FishVis, A regional decision support tool for identifying vulnerabilities of riverine habitat and fishes to climate change in the Great Lakes Region

Science.gov (United States)

Stewart, Jana S.; Covert, S. Alex; Estes, Nick J.; Westenbroek, Stephen M.; Krueger, Damon; Wieferich, Daniel J.; Slattery, Michael T.; Lyons, John D.; McKenna, James E.; Infante, Dana M.; Bruce, Jennifer L.

2016-10-13

Climate change is expected to alter the distributions and community composition of stream fishes in the Great Lakes region in the 21st century, in part as a result of altered hydrological systems (stream temperature, streamflow, and habitat). Resource managers need information and tools to understand where fish species and stream habitats are expected to change under future conditions. Fish sample collections and environmental variables from multiple sources across the United States Great Lakes Basin were integrated and used to develop empirical models to predict fish species occurrence under present-day climate conditions. Random Forests models were used to predict the probability of occurrence of 13 lotic fish species within each stream reach in the study area. Downscaled climate data from general circulation models were integrated with the fish species occurrence models to project fish species occurrence under future climate conditions. The 13 fish species represented three ecological guilds associated with water temperature (cold, cool, and warm), and the species were distributed in streams across the Great Lakes region. Vulnerability (loss of species) and opportunity (gain of species) scores were calculated for all stream reaches by evaluating changes in fish species occurrence from present-day to future climate conditions. The 13 fish species included 4 cold-water species, 5 cool-water species, and 4 warm-water species. Presently, the 4 cold-water species occupy from 15 percent (55,000 kilometers [km]) to 35 percent (130,000 km) of the total stream length (369,215 km) across the study area; the 5 cool-water species, from 9 percent (33,000 km) to 58 percent (215,000 km); and the 4 warm-water species, from 9 percent (33,000 km) to 38 percent (141,000 km).Fish models linked to projections from 13 downscaled climate models projected that in the mid to late 21st century (2046–65 and 2081–2100, respectively) habitats suitable for all 4 cold-water species and 4

To widen the action tools against the climatic change by domestic projects. Evaluation report; Elargir les instruments d'action contre le changement climatique grace aux projets domestiques. Rapport d'evaluation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Arnaud, E.; Dominicis, A. de; Leguet, B.; Leseur, A.; Perthuis, Ch. de

2005-11-15

In the framework of the climatic change fight, each country aims to implement tools of emissions reduction. In France, the european system of CO{sub 2} quotas exchange, applied on the more emitted installations, covers less than 30% of the national carbon emissions. The other 70% are free of taxes. The 'climate mission' realized an evaluation of the emission reduction in the case of a new policy aiming to develop domestic projects of emission control. This report presents the study and its conclusions: the domestic projects, the possibilities of these projects in the transportation agriculture and forests and building sectors, the implementing conditions.

The World Climate Project: Bringing the UN Climate Negotiations to Classrooms, Boardrooms, and Living Rooms Near You

Science.gov (United States)

Rath, K.; Rooney-varga, J. N.; Jones, A.; Johnston, E.; Sterman, J.

2015-12-01

As a simulation-based role-playing exercise, World Climate provides an opportunity for participants to have an immersive experience in which they learn first-hand about both the social dynamics of climate change decision-making, through role-play, and the geophysical dynamics of the climate system, through an interactive computer simulation. In June 2015, we launched the World Climate Project with the intent of bringing this powerful tool to students, citizens, and decision-makers across government, NGO, and private sectors around the world. Within a period of six weeks from the launch date, 440 educators from 36 states and 56 countries have enrolled in the initiative, offering the potential to reach tens of thousands of participants around the world. While this project is clearly in its infancy, we see several characteristics that may be contributing to widespread interest in it. These factors include the ease-of-use, real-world relevance, and scientific rigor of the decision-support simulation, C-ROADS, that frames the World Climate Exercise. Other characteristics of World Climate include its potential to evoke an emotional response that is arousing and inspirational and its use of positive framing and a call to action. Similarly, the World Climate Project takes a collaborative approach, enabling educators to be innovators and valued contributors and regularly communicating with people who join the initiative through webinars, social media, and resources.

Possible future climates. The IPCC-scenarios simulated by dialogue

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hoekstra, J [KEMA-KES, Arnheim (Netherlands)

1996-12-31

Global warming is an environmental problem that increasingly attracts the attention of governments, (inter)national organizations and the general public. Policymakers that want to attack this problem need to understand the causes and effects of all related aspects. For this reason integrated assessment tools are developed that allow policymakers to analyze and evaluate climate change scenarios. Dialogue is such an integrated assessment tool. This article presents the results of Dialogue when the socio-economic parameters of the six well-known IPCC-scenarios, IS92a-f (IPCC 1992) are taken as a point of departure. Using as input, variables as population growth and the energy intensity of an economy, Dialogue goes through a chain of processes and finally determines climatic changes in temperature and precipitation

Urbanism, climate change and health: systems approaches to governance.

Science.gov (United States)

Capon, Anthony G; Synnott, Emma S; Holliday, Sue

2009-01-01

Effective action on climate change health impacts and vulnerability will require systems approaches and integrated policy and planning responses from a range of government agencies. Similar responses are needed to address other complex problems, such as the obesity epidemic. Local government, with its focus on the governance of place, will have a key role in responding to these convergent agendas. Industry can also be part of the solution - indeed it must be, because it has a lead role in relevant sectors. Understanding the co-benefits for health of climate mitigation actions will strengthen the case for early action. There is a need for improved decision support tools to inform urban governance. These tools should be based on a systems approach and should incorporate a spatial perspective.

Possible future climates. The IPCC-scenarios simulated by dialogue

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hoekstra, J. [KEMA-KES, Arnheim (Netherlands)

1995-12-31

Global warming is an environmental problem that increasingly attracts the attention of governments, (inter)national organizations and the general public. Policymakers that want to attack this problem need to understand the causes and effects of all related aspects. For this reason integrated assessment tools are developed that allow policymakers to analyze and evaluate climate change scenarios. Dialogue is such an integrated assessment tool. This article presents the results of Dialogue when the socio-economic parameters of the six well-known IPCC-scenarios, IS92a-f (IPCC 1992) are taken as a point of departure. Using as input, variables as population growth and the energy intensity of an economy, Dialogue goes through a chain of processes and finally determines climatic changes in temperature and precipitation

A Path to Actionable Climate Science: Perspectives from the Field

Science.gov (United States)

DeCrappeo, Nicole M.; Bisbal, Gustavo A.; Meadow, Alison M.

2018-02-01

The U.S. Department of the Interior Climate Science Centers (CSCs) work with natural and cultural resource managers and scientists to gather information and build tools needed to help fish, wildlife, and ecosystems adapt to the impacts of climate change. The CSCs prioritize the delivery of actionable science products (e.g., synthesized scientific information, maps, decision support tools, etc.) that are focused on key management priorities and co-produced by teams of scientists and managers. In the specific case of the Northwest CSC, we have been successful at promoting and supporting the co-production of actionable climate science at the individual project level, but it has been more difficult to replicate this success at the regional program level. Here we identify the most significant challenges in satisfying this mandate and propose the creation of a Science Advisory Panel to provide improved interface between resource managers and scientists engaged with the Northwest CSC.

A globally integrated climate policy for Canada

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bernstein, S.; Brunnee, J.; Duff, D.G.; Green, A.J.

2008-01-01

This book explored policy ideas and options from various perspectives, including science, law, political science, economics and sociology. The costs, opportunities and imperatives to participate in international diplomatic initiatives were considered along with the opportunities of regional global carbon markets. Canada's current policy on climate change negotiations have been focused on domestic regulation and incentives for technological responses and the setting of a domestic carbon price. The sense of urgency about global warming was discussed and the need for action to respond to the threat of global climate change was emphasized. The book also reviewed Canada's role in international climate policies and presented parameters and imperatives for global regime building in Canada. Domestic policy tools were also reviewed along with policy obstacles and opportunities. refs., tabs., figs.

Regional Climate Models as a Tool for Assessing Changes in the Laurentian Great Lakes Net Basin Supply

Science.gov (United States)

Music, B.; Mailhot, E.; Nadeau, D.; Irambona, C.; Frigon, A.

2017-12-01

Over the last decades, there has been growing concern about the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes water supply. Most of the modelling studies focusing on the Laurentian Great Lakes do not allow two-way exchanges of water and energy between the atmosphere and the underlying surface, and therefore do not account for important feedback mechanisms. Moreover, energy budget constraint at the land surface is not usually taken into account. To address this issue, several recent climate change studies used high resolution Regional Climate Models (RCMs) for evaluating changes in the hydrological regime of the Great Lakes. As RCMs operate on the concept of water and energy conservation, an internal consistency of the simulated energy and water budget components is assured. In this study we explore several recently generated Regional Climate Model (RCM) simulations to investigate the Great Lakes' Net Basin Supply (NBS) in a changing climate. These include simulations of the Canadian Regional Climate Model (CRCM5) supplemented by simulations from several others RCMs participating to the North American CORDEX project (CORDEX-NA). The analysis focuses on the NBS extreme values under nonstationary conditions. The results are expected to provide useful information to the industries in the Great Lakes that all need to include accurate climate change information in their long-term strategy plans to better anticipate impacts of low and/or high water levels.

Climate change in EIA - Inspiration from practice

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Larsen, Sanne Vammen

2013-01-01

Climate change integration has been a topic of much interest in the field of impact assessment for a period, and thus far quite some emphasis has been put on discussions of purpose, relevance and overall approaches in both Environmental Impact Assessment of projects (EIA) and Strategic Environmen......Climate change integration has been a topic of much interest in the field of impact assessment for a period, and thus far quite some emphasis has been put on discussions of purpose, relevance and overall approaches in both Environmental Impact Assessment of projects (EIA) and Strategic...... Environmental Assessments of plans and programmes (SEA). However, EIAs and SEAs are already being made, which integrate climate change, and for some aspects this practice has evolved over a long period. This paper seeks to explore this practice and find inspiration from the work with climate change already...... taking place. For exploring the praxis of integrating climate change in practice a document study of 100 Danish EIA reports is carried out. From these reports, statistics and examples are drawn. The study shows an emphasis on integration of climate change mitigation, using various quantitative tools...

Revealing Relationships among Relevant Climate Variables with Information Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Knuth, Kevin H.; Golera, Anthony; Curry, Charles T.; Huyser, Karen A.; Kevin R. Wheeler; Rossow, William B.

2005-01-01

The primary objective of the NASA Earth-Sun Exploration Technology Office is to understand the observed Earth climate variability, thus enabling the determination and prediction of the climate's response to both natural and human-induced forcing. We are currently developing a suite of computational tools that will allow researchers to calculate, from data, a variety of information-theoretic quantities such as mutual information, which can be used to identify relationships among climate variables, and transfer entropy, which indicates the possibility of causal interactions. Our tools estimate these quantities along with their associated error bars, the latter of which is critical for describing the degree of uncertainty in the estimates. This work is based upon optimal binning techniques that we have developed for piecewise-constant, histogram-style models of the underlying density functions. Two useful side benefits have already been discovered. The first allows a researcher to determine whether there exist sufficient data to estimate the underlying probability density. The second permits one to determine an acceptable degree of round-off when compressing data for efficient transfer and storage. We also demonstrate how mutual information and transfer entropy can be applied so as to allow researchers not only to identify relations among climate variables, but also to characterize and quantify their possible causal interactions.

A computational approach to climate science education with CLIMLAB

Science.gov (United States)

Rose, B. E. J.

2017-12-01

CLIMLAB is a Python-based software toolkit for interactive, process-oriented climate modeling for use in education and research. It is motivated by the need for simpler tools and more reproducible workflows with which to "fill in the gaps" between blackboard-level theory and the results of comprehensive climate models. With CLIMLAB you can interactively mix and match physical model components, or combine simpler process models together into a more comprehensive model. I use CLIMLAB in the classroom to put models in the hands of students (undergraduate and graduate), and emphasize a hierarchical, process-oriented approach to understanding the key emergent properties of the climate system. CLIMLAB is equally a tool for climate research, where the same needs exist for more robust, process-based understanding and reproducible computational results. I will give an overview of CLIMLAB and an update on recent developments, including: a full-featured, well-documented, interactive implementation of a widely-used radiation model (RRTM) packaging with conda-forge for compiler-free (and hassle-free!) installation on Mac, Windows and Linux interfacing with xarray for i/o and graphics with gridded model data a rich and growing collection of examples and self-computing lecture notes in Jupyter notebook format

Assessing adaptive management options to cope with climate change at the farm level

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rötter, R.P.; Lehtonen, H.; Kahiluoto, J.; Helin, J.; Palosuo, T.; Salo, T.; Pavlova, Y.; Wolf, J.; Carter, T.R.; Ewert, F.

2010-01-01

In recent years, considerable achievements have been made by several European climate research groups in gaining a better understanding of and in developing methodologies and tools for integrated, multiscale analyses of how to adapt agricultural systems to climate change. Efforts are under way to

The Urban Leaders Adaptation Initiative: Climate Resilient Local Governments

Science.gov (United States)

Foster, J. G.

2008-12-01

Adaptation Initiative will equip CCAP partners with the knowledge and tools to get started on planning and implementing adaptation measures. Drawing on the best and brightest state, local and national policy experts, it will recommend a comprehensive set of actions that will enable the federal government to support local resiliency efforts. Toward that end, CCAP has identified three core principles for national climate adaptation policy: 1. National climate policy should support state and local adaptation planning and implementation, such as through use of cap-and-trade allowance auction proceeds; 2. Federal agencies should provide adaptation assistance to state and local governments, including regional impact assessments, downscaled climate model data, updated flood maps, planning tools, drought early warning, and implementation guidance; and 3. A national climate service and extension network needs to be established to aid local governments implementing resilience measures in collaboration with universities, companies and technical experts around the country.

THE REGRESSION MODEL OF IRAN LIBRARIES ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE.

Science.gov (United States)

Jahani, Mohammad Ali; Yaminfirooz, Mousa; Siamian, Hasan

2015-10-01

The purpose of this study was to drawing a regression model of organizational climate of central libraries of Iran's universities. This study is an applied research. The statistical population of this study consisted of 96 employees of the central libraries of Iran's public universities selected among the 117 universities affiliated to the Ministry of Health by Stratified Sampling method (510 people). Climate Qual localized questionnaire was used as research tools. For predicting the organizational climate pattern of the libraries is used from the multivariate linear regression and track diagram. of the 9 variables affecting organizational climate, 5 variables of innovation, teamwork, customer service, psychological safety and deep diversity play a major role in prediction of the organizational climate of Iran's libraries. The results also indicate that each of these variables with different coefficient have the power to predict organizational climate but the climate score of psychological safety (0.94) plays a very crucial role in predicting the organizational climate. Track diagram showed that five variables of teamwork, customer service, psychological safety, deep diversity and innovation directly effects on the organizational climate variable that contribution of the team work from this influence is more than any other variables. Of the indicator of the organizational climate of climateQual, the contribution of the team work from this influence is more than any other variables that reinforcement of teamwork in academic libraries can be more effective in improving the organizational climate of this type libraries.

Improving Climate Projections Using "Intelligent" Ensembles

Science.gov (United States)

Baker, Noel C.; Taylor, Patrick C.

2015-01-01

Recent changes in the climate system have led to growing concern, especially in communities which are highly vulnerable to resource shortages and weather extremes. There is an urgent need for better climate information to develop solutions and strategies for adapting to a changing climate. Climate models provide excellent tools for studying the current state of climate and making future projections. However, these models are subject to biases created by structural uncertainties. Performance metrics-or the systematic determination of model biases-succinctly quantify aspects of climate model behavior. Efforts to standardize climate model experiments and collect simulation data-such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP)-provide the means to directly compare and assess model performance. Performance metrics have been used to show that some models reproduce present-day climate better than others. Simulation data from multiple models are often used to add value to projections by creating a consensus projection from the model ensemble, in which each model is given an equal weight. It has been shown that the ensemble mean generally outperforms any single model. It is possible to use unequal weights to produce ensemble means, in which models are weighted based on performance (called "intelligent" ensembles). Can performance metrics be used to improve climate projections? Previous work introduced a framework for comparing the utility of model performance metrics, showing that the best metrics are related to the variance of top-of-atmosphere outgoing longwave radiation. These metrics improve present-day climate simulations of Earth's energy budget using the "intelligent" ensemble method. The current project identifies several approaches for testing whether performance metrics can be applied to future simulations to create "intelligent" ensemble-mean climate projections. It is shown that certain performance metrics test key climate processes in the models, and

Fuel Supply Defaults for Regional Fuels and Fuel Wizard Tool in MOVES201X

Science.gov (United States)

The fuel supply report documents the data and methodology used to derive the default gasoline, diesel and fuel-blend fuel properties, and their respective fuel market share in MOVES. The default market share of the individual fuels varies by calendar year, seasons, and several do...

Activities, Animations, and Online Tools to Enable Undergraduate Student Learning of Geohazards, Climate Change, and Water Resources

Science.gov (United States)

Pratt-Sitaula, B. A.; Walker, B.; Douglas, B. J.; Cronin, V. S.; Funning, G.; Stearns, L. A.; Charlevoix, D.; Miller, M. M.

2017-12-01

The NSF-funded GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues (GETSI) project is developing teaching resources for use in introductory and majors-level courses, emphasizing a broad range of geodetic methods and data applied to societally important issues. The modules include a variety of hands-on activities, demonstrations, animations, and interactive online tools in order to facilitate student learning and engagement. A selection of these activities will be showcased at the AGU session. These activities and data analysis exercises are embedded in 4-6 units per module. Modules can take 2-3 weeks of course time total or individual units and activities can be selected and used over just 1-2 class periods. Existing modules are available online via serc.carleton.edu/getsi/ and include "Ice mass and sea level changes", "Imaging active tectonics with LiDAR and InSAR", "Measuring water resources with GPS, gravity, and traditional methods", "Surface process hazards", and "GPS, strain, and earthquakes". Modules, and their activities and demonstrations were designed by teams of faculty and content experts and underwent rigorous classroom testing and review using the process developed by the Science Education Resource Center's InTeGrate Project (serc.carleton.edu/integrate). All modules are aligned to Earth Science and Climate literacy principles. GETSI collaborating institutions are UNAVCO (which runs NSF's Geodetic Facility), Indiana University, and Mt San Antonio College. Initial funding came from NSF's TUES (Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM). A second phase of funding from NSF IUSE (Improving Undergraduate STEM Education) is just starting and will fund another six modules (including their demonstrations, activities, and hands-on activities) as well as considerably more instructor professional development to facilitate implementation and use.

The Integration of Climate Science and Collaborative Processes in Building Regional Climate Resiliency in Southeast Florida

Science.gov (United States)

Jurado, J.

2016-12-01

Southeast Florida is widely recognized as one of the most vulnerable regions in the United States to the impacts of climate change, especially sea level rise. Dense urban populations, low land elevations, flat topography, complex shorelines and a porous geology all contribute to the region's challenges. Regional and local governments have been working collaboratively to address shared climate mitigation and adaptation concerns as part of the four-county Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact (Compact). This partnership has emphasized, in part, the use of climate data and the development of advanced technical tools and visualizations to help inform decision-making, improve communications, and guide investments. Prominent work products have included regional vulnerability maps and assessments, a unified sea level rise projection for southeast Florida, the development and application of hydrologic models in scenario planning, interdisciplinary resilient redesign planning workshops, and the development of regional climate indicators. Key to the Compact's efforts has been the engagement and expertise of academic and agency partners, including a formal collaboration between the Florida Climate Institute and the Compact to improve research and project collaborations focused on southeast Florida. This presentation will focus on the collaborative processes and work products that have served to accelerate resiliency planning and investments in southeast Florida, with specific examples of how local governments are using these work products to modernize agency processes, and build support among residents and business leaders.

Tools for Interdisciplinary Data Assimilation and Sharing in Support of Hydrologic Science

Science.gov (United States)

Blodgett, D. L.; Walker, J.; Suftin, I.; Warren, M.; Kunicki, T.

2013-12-01

Information consumed and produced in hydrologic analyses is interdisciplinary and massive. These factors put a heavy information management burden on the hydrologic science community. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Office of Water Information Center for Integrated Data Analytics (CIDA) seeks to assist hydrologic science investigators with all-components of their scientific data management life cycle. Ongoing data publication and software development projects will be presented demonstrating publically available data access services and manipulation tools being developed with support from two Department of the Interior initiatives. The USGS-led National Water Census seeks to provide both data and tools in support of nationally consistent water availability estimates. Newly available data include national coverages of radar-indicated precipitation, actual evapotranspiration, water use estimates aggregated by county, and South East region estimates of streamflow for 12-digit hydrologic unit code watersheds. Web services making these data available and applications to access them will be demonstrated. Web-available processing services able to provide numerous streamflow statistics for any USGS daily flow record or model result time series and other National Water Census processing tools will also be demonstrated. The National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center is a USGS center leading DOI-funded academic global change adaptation research. It has a mission goal to ensure data used and produced by funded projects is available via web services and tools that streamline data management tasks in interdisciplinary science. For example, collections of downscaled climate projections, typically large collections of files that must be downloaded to be accessed, are being published using web services that allow access to the entire dataset via simple web-service requests and numerous processing tools. Recent progress on this front includes, data web services for Climate

Near-Term Actions to Address Long-Term Climate Risk

Science.gov (United States)

Lempert, R. J.

2014-12-01

Addressing climate change requires effective long-term policy making, which occurs when reflecting on potential events decades or more in the future causes policy makers to choose near-term actions different than those they would otherwise pursue. Contrary to some expectations, policy makers do sometimes make such long-term decisions, but not as commonly and successfully as climate change may require. In recent years however, the new capabilities of analytic decision support tools, combined with improved understanding of cognitive and organizational behaviors, has significantly improved the methods available for organizations to manage longer-term climate risks. In particular, these tools allow decision makers to understand what near-term actions consistently contribute to achieving both short- and long-term societal goals, even in the face of deep uncertainty regarding the long-term future. This talk will describe applications of these approaches for infrastructure, water, and flood risk management planning, as well as studies of how near-term choices about policy architectures can affect long-term greenhouse gas emission reduction pathways.

Mathematical paradigms of climate science

CERN Document Server

Cannarsa, Piermarco; Jones, Christopher; Portaluri, Alessandro

2016-01-01

This book, featuring a truly interdisciplinary approach, provides an overview of cutting-edge mathematical theories and techniques that promise to play a central role in climate science. It brings together some of the most interesting overview lectures given by the invited speakers at an important workshop held in Rome in 2013 as a part of MPE2013 (“Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013”). The aim of the workshop was to foster the interaction between climate scientists and mathematicians active in various fields linked to climate sciences, such as dynamical systems, partial differential equations, control theory, stochastic systems, and numerical analysis. Mathematics and statistics already play a central role in this area. Likewise, computer science must have a say in the efforts to simulate the Earth’s environment on the unprecedented scale of petabytes. In the context of such complexity, new mathematical tools are needed to organize and simplify the approach. The growing importance of data assimilation te...

Digi-Clima Grid: image processing and distributed computing for recovering historical climate data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sergio Nesmachnow

2015-12-01

Full Text Available This article describes the Digi-Clima Grid project, whose main goals are to design and implement semi-automatic techniques for digitalizing and recovering historical climate records applying parallel computing techniques over distributed computing infrastructures. The specific tool developed for image processing is described, and the implementation over grid and cloud infrastructures is reported. A experimental analysis over institutional and volunteer-based grid/cloud distributed systems demonstrate that the proposed approach is an efficient tool for recovering historical climate data. The parallel implementations allow to distribute the processing load, achieving accurate speedup values.

Software Testing and Verification in Climate Model Development

Science.gov (United States)

Clune, Thomas L.; Rood, RIchard B.

2011-01-01

Over the past 30 years most climate models have grown from relatively simple representations of a few atmospheric processes to a complex multi-disciplinary system. Computer infrastructure over that period has gone from punch card mainframes to modem parallel clusters. Model implementations have become complex, brittle, and increasingly difficult to extend and maintain. Existing verification processes for model implementations rely almost exclusively upon some combination of detailed analysis of output from full climate simulations and system-level regression tests. In additional to being quite costly in terms of developer time and computing resources, these testing methodologies are limited in terms of the types of defects that can be detected, isolated and diagnosed. Mitigating these weaknesses of coarse-grained testing with finer-grained "unit" tests has been perceived as cumbersome and counter-productive. In the commercial software sector, recent advances in tools and methodology have led to a renaissance for systematic fine-grained testing. We discuss the availability of analogous tools for scientific software and examine benefits that similar testing methodologies could bring to climate modeling software. We describe the unique challenges faced when testing complex numerical algorithms and suggest techniques to minimize and/or eliminate the difficulties.

Java Climate Model: a tool for interaction between science, policy and citizens, to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system

Science.gov (United States)

Matthews, B.

2003-04-01

To reach an effective global agreement to help avoid "dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system" (UNFCCC article 2) we must balance many complex interacting issues, and also inspire the active engagement of citizens around the world. So we have to transfer understanding back from computers and experts, into the ultimate "integrated assessment model" which remains the global network of human heads. The Java Climate Model (JCM) tries to help provide a quantitative framework for this global dialogue, by enabling anybody to explore many mitigation policy options and scientific uncertainties simply by adjusting parameter controls with a mouse in a web browser. The instant response on linked plots helps to demonstrate cause and effect, and the sensitivity to various assumptions, risk and value judgements. JCM implements the same simple models and formulae as used by IPCC for the TAR projections, in efficient modular structure, including carbon cycle and atmospheric chemistry, radiative forcing, changes in temperature and sealevel, including some feedbacks. As well as explore the SRES scenarios, the user can create a wide variety of inverse scenarios for stabilising CO2, forcing, or temperature. People ask how local emissions which they can control, may influence the vast global natural and human systems, and change local climate impacts which affect them directly. JCM includes regional emissions and socioeconomic data, and scaled climate impact maps. However to complete this loop in a fast interactive model is a challenge! For transparency and accessibility, pop-up information is provided in ten languages, and documentation ranges from key cross-cutting questions, to them details of the model formulae, including all source code.

NUTRItion and CLIMate (NUTRICLIM): investigating the relationship between climate variables and childhood malnutrition through agriculture, an exploratory study in Burkina Faso.

Science.gov (United States)

Sorgho, Raissa; Franke, Jonas; Simboro, Seraphin; Phalkey, Revati; Saeurborn, Rainer

Malnutrition remains a leading cause of death in children in low- and middle-income countries; this will be aggravated by climate change. Annually, 6.9 million deaths of children under 5 were attributable directly or indirectly to malnutrition. Although these figures have recently decreased, evidence shows that a world with a medium climate (local warming up to 3-4 °C) will create an additional 25.2 million malnourished children. This proof of concept study explores the relationships between childhood malnutrition (more specifically stunting), regional agricultural yields, and climate variables through the use of remote sensing (RS) satellite imaging along with algorithms to predict the effect of climate variability on agricultural yields and on malnutrition of children under 5. The success of this proof of purpose study, NUTRItion and CLIMate (NUTRICLIM), should encourage researchers to apply both concept and tools to study of the link between weather variability, crop yield, and malnutrition on a larger scale. It would also allow for linking such micro-level data to climate models and address the challenge of projecting the additional impact of childhood malnutrition from climate change to various policy relevant time horizons.

Inferring climate variability from skewed proxy records

Science.gov (United States)

Emile-Geay, J.; Tingley, M.

2013-12-01

Many paleoclimate analyses assume a linear relationship between the proxy and the target climate variable, and that both the climate quantity and the errors follow normal distributions. An ever-increasing number of proxy records, however, are better modeled using distributions that are heavy-tailed, skewed, or otherwise non-normal, on account of the proxies reflecting non-normally distributed climate variables, or having non-linear relationships with a normally distributed climate variable. The analysis of such proxies requires a different set of tools, and this work serves as a cautionary tale on the danger of making conclusions about the underlying climate from applications of classic statistical procedures to heavily skewed proxy records. Inspired by runoff proxies, we consider an idealized proxy characterized by a nonlinear, thresholded relationship with climate, and describe three approaches to using such a record to infer past climate: (i) applying standard methods commonly used in the paleoclimate literature, without considering the non-linearities inherent to the proxy record; (ii) applying a power transform prior to using these standard methods; (iii) constructing a Bayesian model to invert the mechanistic relationship between the climate and the proxy. We find that neglecting the skewness in the proxy leads to erroneous conclusions and often exaggerates changes in climate variability between different time intervals. In contrast, an explicit treatment of the skewness, using either power transforms or a Bayesian inversion of the mechanistic model for the proxy, yields significantly better estimates of past climate variations. We apply these insights in two paleoclimate settings: (1) a classical sedimentary record from Laguna Pallcacocha, Ecuador (Moy et al., 2002). Our results agree with the qualitative aspects of previous analyses of this record, but quantitative departures are evident and hold implications for how such records are interpreted, and

Multi-scale climate modelling over Southern Africa using a variable-resolution global model

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Engelbrecht, FA

2011-12-01

Full Text Available -mail: fengelbrecht@csir.co.za Multi-scale climate modelling over Southern Africa using a variable-resolution global model FA Engelbrecht1, 2*, WA Landman1, 3, CJ Engelbrecht4, S Landman5, MM Bopape1, B Roux6, JL McGregor7 and M Thatcher7 1 CSIR Natural... improvement. Keywords: multi-scale climate modelling, variable-resolution atmospheric model Introduction Dynamic climate models have become the primary tools for the projection of future climate change, at both the global and regional scales. Dynamic...

NCPP's Use of Standard Metadata to Promote Open and Transparent Climate Modeling

Science.gov (United States)

Treshansky, A.; Barsugli, J. J.; Guentchev, G.; Rood, R. B.; DeLuca, C.

2012-12-01

The National Climate Predictions and Projections (NCPP) Platform is developing comprehensive regional and local information about the evolving climate to inform decision making and adaptation planning. This includes both creating and providing tools to create metadata about the models and processes used to create its derived data products. NCPP is using the Common Information Model (CIM), an ontology developed by a broad set of international partners in climate research, as its metadata language. This use of a standard ensures interoperability within the climate community as well as permitting access to the ecosystem of tools and services emerging alongside the CIM. The CIM itself is divided into a general-purpose (UML & XML) schema which structures metadata documents, and a project or community-specific (XML) Controlled Vocabulary (CV) which constraints the content of metadata documents. NCPP has already modified the CIM Schema to accommodate downscaling models, simulations, and experiments. NCPP is currently developing a CV for use by the downscaling community. Incorporating downscaling into the CIM will lead to several benefits: easy access to the existing CIM Documents describing CMIP5 models and simulations that are being downscaled, access to software tools that have been developed in order to search, manipulate, and visualize CIM metadata, and coordination with national and international efforts such as ES-DOC that are working to make climate model descriptions and datasets interoperable. Providing detailed metadata descriptions which include the full provenance of derived data products will contribute to making that data (and, the models and processes which generated that data) more open and transparent to the user community.

Options for national parks and reserves for adapting to climate change

Science.gov (United States)

Baron, Jill S.; Gunderson, Lance; Allen, Craig D.; Fleishman, Erica; McKenzie, Donald; Meyerson, Laura A.; Oropeza, Jill; Stephenson, Nathan L.

2009-01-01

Past and present climate has shaped the valued ecosystems currently protected in parks and reserves, but future climate change will redefine these conditions. Continued conservation as climate changes will require thinking differently about resource management than we have in the past; we present some logical steps and tools for doing so. Three critical tenets underpin future management plans and activities: (1) climate patterns of the past will not be the climate patterns of the future; (2) climate defines the environment and influences future trajectories of the distributions of species and their habitats; (3) specific management actions may help increase the resilience of some natural resources, but fundamental changes in species and their environment may be inevitable. Science-based management will be necessary because past experience may not serve as a guide for novel future conditions. Identifying resources and processes at risk, defining thresholds and reference conditions, and establishing monitoring and assessment programs are among the types of scientific practices needed to support a broadened portfolio of management activities. In addition to the control and hedging management strategies commonly in use today, we recommend adaptive management wherever possible. Adaptive management increases our ability to address the multiple scales at which species and processes function, and increases the speed of knowledge transfer among scientists and managers. Scenario planning provides a broad forward-thinking framework from which the most appropriate management tools can be chosen. The scope of climate change effects will require a shared vision among regional partners. Preparing for and adapting to climate change is as much a cultural and intellectual challenge as an ecological challenge.

Options for national parks and reserves for adapting to climate change.

Science.gov (United States)

Baron, Jill S; Gunderson, Lance; Allen, Craig D; Fleishman, Erica; McKenzie, Donald; Meyerson, Laura A; Oropeza, Jill; Stephenson, Nate

2009-12-01

Past and present climate has shaped the valued ecosystems currently protected in parks and reserves, but future climate change will redefine these conditions. Continued conservation as climate changes will require thinking differently about resource management than we have in the past; we present some logical steps and tools for doing so. Three critical tenets underpin future management plans and activities: (1) climate patterns of the past will not be the climate patterns of the future; (2) climate defines the environment and influences future trajectories of the distributions of species and their habitats; (3) specific management actions may help increase the resilience of some natural resources, but fundamental changes in species and their environment may be inevitable. Science-based management will be necessary because past experience may not serve as a guide for novel future conditions. Identifying resources and processes at risk, defining thresholds and reference conditions, and establishing monitoring and assessment programs are among the types of scientific practices needed to support a broadened portfolio of management activities. In addition to the control and hedging management strategies commonly in use today, we recommend adaptive management wherever possible. Adaptive management increases our ability to address the multiple scales at which species and processes function, and increases the speed of knowledge transfer among scientists and managers. Scenario planning provides a broad forward-thinking framework from which the most appropriate management tools can be chosen. The scope of climate change effects will require a shared vision among regional partners. Preparing for and adapting to climate change is as much a cultural and intellectual challenge as an ecological challenge.

Economic decision-models for climate adaptation: a survey; Ekonomiska verktyg som beslutsstoed i klimatanpassningsarbetet: en metodoeversikt

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Kaagebro, Elin; Vredin Johansson, Maria

2008-05-15

Several of the adaptations to the climate change we are about to experience will occur successively and voluntarily in response to the climate change experienced. In many cases these adaptations will work perfectly but, for investments and activities with relatively long life-times (say more than 25 years) and for investments and activities that are sensitive to climate extremes, climate change requires increased planning and foresight. In these situations economic decision models can aid the decision-makers through providing well-founded bases for the decisions, as well as tools for prioritizations. In this report we describe the most common economic decision-models: cost-benefit analysis (CBA), cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and multi-criteria analysis (MCA). The descriptions will form a foundation for the continuing work on generating tools that can be useful for local decision-makers in their pursuit of coping with climate change within the Climatools programme

Visual Climate Knowledge Discovery within a Grid Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Heitzler, Magnus; Kiertscher, Simon; Lang, Ulrich; Nocke, Thomas; Wahnes, Jens; Winkelmann, Volker

2013-04-01

The C3Grid-INAD project aims to provide a common grid infrastructure for the climate science community to improve access to climate related data and domain workflows via the Internet. To make sense of the heterogeneous, often large-sized or even dynamically generated and modified files originating from C3Grid, a highly flexible and user-friendly analysis software is needed to run on different high-performance computing nodes within the grid environment, when requested by a user. Because visual analysis tools directly address human visual perception and therefore are being considered to be highly intuitive, two distinct visualization workflows have been integrated in C3Grid-INAD, targeting different application backgrounds. First, a GrADS-based workflow enables the ad-hoc visualization of selected datasets in respect to data source, temporal and spatial extent, as well as variables of interest. Being low in resource demands, this workflow allows for users to gain fast insights through basic spatial visualization. For more advanced visual analysis purposes, a second workflow enables the user to start a visualization session via Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and VirtualGL to access high-performance computing nodes on which a wide variety of different visual analysis tools are provided. These are made available using the easy-to-use software system SimEnvVis. Considering metadata as well as user preferences and analysis goals, SimEnvVis evaluates the attached tools and launches the selected visual analysis tool by providing a dynamically parameterized template. This approach facilitates the selection of the most suitable tools, and at the same time eases the process of familiarization with them. Because of a higher demand for computational resources, SimEnvVis-sessions are restricted to a smaller set of users at a time. This architecture enables climate scientists not only to remotely access, but also to visually analyze highly heterogeneous data originating from C3

CARICOF - The Caribbean Regional Climate Outlook Forum

Science.gov (United States)

Van Meerbeeck, Cedric

2013-04-01

Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs) are viewed as a critical building block in the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The GFCS seeks to extend RCOFs to all vulnerable regions of the world such as the Caribbean, of which the entire population is exposed to water- and heat-related natural hazards. An RCOF is initially intended to identify gaps in information and technical capability; facilitate research cooperation and data exchange within and between regions, and improve coordination within the climate forecasting community. A focus is given on variations in climate conditions on a seasonal timescale. In this view, the relevance of a Caribbean RCOF (CARICOF) is the following: while the seasonality of the climate in the Caribbean has been well documented, major gaps in knowledge exist in terms of the drivers in the shifts of amplitude and phase of seasons (as evidenced from the worst region-wide drought period in recent history during 2009-2010). To address those gaps, CARICOF has brought together National Weather Services (NWSs) from 18 territories under the coordination of the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), to produce region-wide, consensus, seasonal climate outlooks since March 2012. These outlooks include tercile rainfall forecasts, sea and air surface temperature forecasts as well as the likely evolution of the drivers of seasonal climate variability in the region, being amongst others the El Niño Southern Oscillation or tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea temperatures. Forecasts for both the national-scale forecasts made by the NWSs and CIMH's regional-scale forecast amalgamate output from several forecasting tools. These currently include: (1) statistical models such as Canonical Correlation Analysis run with the Climate Predictability Tool, providing tercile rainfall forecasts at weather station scale; (2) a global outlooks published by the WMO appointed Global Producing

Impacts of climate change on paddy rice yield in a temperate climate.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Han-Yong; Ko, Jonghan; Kang, Suchel; Tenhunen, John

2013-02-01

The crop simulation model is a suitable tool for evaluating the potential impacts of climate change on crop production and on the environment. This study investigates the effects of climate change on paddy rice production in the temperate climate regions under the East Asian monsoon system using the CERES-Rice 4.0 crop simulation model. This model was first calibrated and validated for crop production under elevated CO2 and various temperature conditions. Data were obtained from experiments performed using a temperature gradient field chamber (TGFC) with a CO2 enrichment system installed at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, Korea in 2009 and 2010. Based on the empirical calibration and validation, the model was applied to deliver a simulated forecast of paddy rice production for the region, as well as for the other Japonica rice growing regions in East Asia, projecting for years 2050 and 2100. In these climate change projection simulations in Gwangju, Korea, the yield increases (+12.6 and + 22.0%) due to CO2 elevation were adjusted according to temperature increases showing variation dependent upon the cultivars, which resulted in significant yield decreases (-22.1% and -35.0%). The projected yields were determined to increase as latitude increases due to reduced temperature effects, showing the highest increase for any of the study locations (+24%) in Harbin, China. It appears that the potential negative impact on crop production may be mediated by appropriate cultivar selection and cultivation changes such as alteration of the planting date. Results reported in this study using the CERES-Rice 4.0 model demonstrate the promising potential for its further application in simulating the impacts of climate change on rice production from a local to a regional scale under the monsoon climate system. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

GPCC - A weather generator-based statistical downscaling tool for site-specific assessment of climate change impacts

Science.gov (United States)

Resolution of climate model outputs are too coarse to be used as direct inputs to impact models for assessing climate change impacts on agricultural production, water resources, and eco-system services at local or site-specific scales. Statistical downscaling approaches are usually used to bridge th...

Software Analysis of New Space Gravity Data for Geophysics and Climate Research

Science.gov (United States)

Deese, Rupert; Ivins, Erik R.; Fielding, Eric J.

2012-01-01

Both the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellites are returning rich data for the study of the solid earth, the oceans, and the climate. Current software analysis tools do not provide researchers with the ease and flexibility required to make full use of this data. We evaluate the capabilities and shortcomings of existing software tools including Mathematica, the GOCE User Toolbox, the ICGEM's (International Center for Global Earth Models) web server, and Tesseroids. Using existing tools as necessary, we design and implement software with the capability to produce gridded data and publication quality renderings from raw gravity data. The straight forward software interface marks an improvement over previously existing tools and makes new space gravity data more useful to researchers. Using the software we calculate Bouguer anomalies of the gravity tensor's vertical component in the Gulf of Mexico, Antarctica, and the 2010 Maule earthquake region. These maps identify promising areas of future research.

Proceedings of the CEATI water management 2008 workshop : climate change impacts on hydroelectric water resource management

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2008-01-01

Hydroelectric power will occupy a significant portion of future renewable energy sources. This conference provided a forum for scientists, industry experts, and utility operators to discuss methods of determining and managing the potential impacts of climatic change on water resources. Attendants at the conference discussed issues related to future water supplies, and examined methods of predicting hydrological shifts and pattern changes for various watersheds and basins. Methods of using global climate and regional climate models for predicting the impacts of climatic change on water resources were reviewed, and new strategies for simulating and predicting shifts in sedimentation and shoreline erosion were discussed. New technologies and tools designed to improve the accuracy of utility risk assessments were also presented. The conference was divided into the following 11 sessions: (1) climate change impacts, (2) hydroclimatic variability, (3) downscaling of climate models, (4) global climate models and regional climate models, (5) watershed modelling, (6) adaptation on short-, medium-, and long-term planning, (7) climate change adaptation, (8) operations and planning, (9) risk assessment and uncertainty, (10) operations and planning, and (11) extreme events. A series of workshop posters presented new forecasting and simulation tools. The conference featured 35 presentations, of which 11 have been catalogued separately for inclusion in this database. tabs., figs

Climate and Energy Policy in Hungary

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maria Csete

2012-02-01

Full Text Available The energy problem has been redefined as one of the most important elements of sustainable development by climate change, adaptation and mitigation. Meeting energy needs is always a current issue in Hungary, irrespective of climate change because of the country’s high dependency on oil and gas imports, limited opportunities to replace them with domestic production, and the pollution associated with using fossil energy sources. Increasing effectiveness and saving energy can provide relatively short-term solutions with bearable costs and a relatively quick return on investment. The aim of the present paper is to give an overview about the climate and energy policy in Hungary with a special focus on the new energy strategy. Energy policy has a pivotal role in the economic recovery plan of the Hungarian government. The National Energy Strategy 2030 taking shape in Hungary takes climate policy into account with respect to adaptation and mitigation and lists renewable energy sources as the second most important tool for achieving strategic goals. As in most countries, it is also possible in Hungary to introduce climate strategy measures with zero social costs. The expedient management of climate change requires the combination of prevention, adaptation and dissemination initiatives. Strategies must meet a dual requirement: they must face the economic risks associated with premature measures, while also considering the adverse effects of delay.

Climate policy uncertainty and investment risk

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2007-06-21

Our climate is changing. This is certain. Less certain, however, is the timing and magnitude of climate change, and the cost of transition to a low-carbon world. Therefore, many policies and programmes are still at a formative stage, and policy uncertainty is very high. This book identifies how climate change policy uncertainty may affect investment behaviour in the power sector. For power companies, where capital stock is intensive and long-lived, those risks rank among the biggest and can create an incentive to delay investment. Our analysis results show that the risk premiums of climate change uncertainty can add 40% of construction costs of the plant for power investors, and 10% of price surcharges for the electricity end-users. This publication tells what can be done in policy design to reduce these costs. Incorporating the results of quantitative analysis, this publication also shows the sensitivity of different power sector investment decisions to different risks. It compares the effects of climate policy uncertainty with energy market uncertainty, showing the relative importance of these sources of risk for different technologies in different market types. Drawing on extensive consultation with power companies and financial investors, it also assesses the implications for policy makers, allowing the key messages to be transferred into policy designs. This book is a useful tool for governments to improve climate policy mechanisms and create more certainty for power investors.

Climate Services Information System Activities in Support of The Global Framework for Climate Services Implementation

Science.gov (United States)

Timofeyeva-Livezey, M. M.; Horsfall, F. M. C.; Pulwarty, R. S.; Klein-Tank, A.; Kolli, R. K.; Hechler, P.; Dilley, M.; Ceron, J. P.; Goodess, C.

2017-12-01

The WMO Commission on Climatology (CCl) supports the implementation of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) with a particular focus on the Climate Services Information System (CSIS), which is the core operational component of GFCS at the global, regional, and national level. CSIS is designed for producing, packaging and operationally delivering authoritative climate information data and products through appropriate operational systems, practices, data exchange, technical standards, authentication, communication, and product delivery. Its functions include climate analysis and monitoring, assessment and attribution, prediction (monthly, seasonal, decadal), and projection (centennial scale) as well as tailoring the associated products tUEAo suit user requirements. A central, enabling piece of implementation of CSIS is a Climate Services Toolkit (CST). In its development phase, CST exists as a prototype (www.wmo.int/cst) as a compilation of tools for generating tailored data and products for decision-making, with a special focus on national requirements in developing countries. WMO provides a server to house the CST prototype as well as support operations and maintenance. WMO members provide technical expertise and other in-kind support, including leadership of the CSIS development team. Several recent WMO events have helped with the deployment of CST within the eight countries that have been recognized by GFCS as illustrative for developing their climate services at national levels. Currently these countries are developing climate services projects focusing service development and delivery for selected economic sectors, such as for health, agriculture, energy, water resources, and hydrometeorological disaster risk reduction. These countries are working together with their respective WMO Regional Climate Centers (RCCs), which provide technical assistance with implementation of climate services projects at the country level and facilitate development of

The Portuguese Climate Portal

Science.gov (United States)

Gomes, Sandra; Deus, Ricardo; Nogueira, Miguel; Viterbo, Pedro; Miranda, Miguel; Antunes, Sílvia; Silva, Alvaro; Miranda, Pedro

2016-04-01

quantify a plausible evolution of climate impacts and its uncertainties. Clear information on the data value and limitations is also provided. The portal is expected to become a reference tool for evaluation of impacts and vulnerabilities due to climate change, increased awareness and promotion of local adaptation and sustainable development in Portugal. The Portuguese Local Warming Website is part of the ADAPT programme, and is co-funded by the EEA financial mechanism and the Portuguese Carbon Fund.

Lake sediment records of Quaternary climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moy, C.

2016-01-01

Lake sediments are excellent archives of climate and environmental change. Lakes typically exhibit high sedimentation rates, contain sedimentary components well-suited for a multi-proxy approach, multiple dating methods can be applied, exhibit a broad geographic distribution, and are relatively accessible for study. Furthermore, a number of geochemical techniques can be applied to recontsruct components of the climate system based on the stable isotope geochemistry of carbonate or organic phases preserved and exposed in lacustrine sedimentary cores. Various stable isotope methods can be applied to lacustrine systems and these are a valuable tool that can be used to monitor physical processes (e.g. evaporation), vegetation dynamics within the watershed (C 3 vs C 4 plant distributions), biologic processes (aquatic productivity), all of which can be driven by a regional climate forcing. (author).

Lake sediment records of Quaternary climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moy, C.

2014-01-01

Lake sediments are excellent archives of climate and environmental change. Lakes typically exhibit high sedimentation rates, contain sedimentary components well-suited for a multi-proxy approach, multiple dating methods can be applied, exhibit a broad geographic distribution, and are relatively accessible for study. Furthermore, a number of geochemical techniques can be applied to recontsruct components of the climate system based on the stable isotope geochemistry of carbonate or organic phases preserved and exposed in lacustrine sedimentary cores. Various stable isotope methods can be applied to lacustrine systems and these are a valuable tool that can be used to monitor physical processes (e.g. evaporation), vegetation dynamics within the watershed (C 3 vs C 4 plant distributions), biologic processes (aquatic productivity), all of which can be driven by a regional climate forcing. (author)

Lake sediment records of Quaternary climate change

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moy, C.

2015-01-01

Lake sediments are excellent archives of climate and environmental change. Lakes typically exhibit high sedimentation rates, contain sedimentary components well-suited for a multi-proxy approach, multiple dating methods can be applied, exhibit a broad geographic distribution, and are relatively accessible for study. Furthermore, a number of geochemical techniques can be applied to recontsruct components of the climate system based on the stable isotope geochemistry of carbonate or organic phases preserved and exposed in lacustrine sedimentary cores. Various stable isotope methods can be applied to lacustrine systems and these are a valuable tool that can be used to monitor physical processes (e.g. evaporation), vegetation dynamics within the watershed (C 3 vs C 4 plant distributions), biologic processes (aquatic productivity), all of which can be driven by a regional climate forcing. (author)

DESIGN OF LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT TOOL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE RISK IN MONGOLIA