28 January 2009

Knowledge Centers Could Help Regions Cope with Climate Change, January 28, 2009

(Planetary processes already are producing regional and local effects)

This is the second article in a series about steps to address the effects of climate change at regional and local levels.

By Cheryl Pellerin
Staff Writer

Washington — Carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities is causing changes in Earth’s surface temperature, rainfall and sea level that are measurable now, new research says, and that will continue for the next thousand years.

Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, led the study, published the week of January 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The work “convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet,” Solomon said in a January 26 statement. “It has long been known that some of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. But the new study advances the understanding of how this affects the climate system.”

Also from NOAA, a preliminary analysis by the agency’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, reported January 14 that 2008 tied with 2001 as the eighth-warmest year on record for planet Earth, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures through December 2008.

DECISION-QUALITY KNOWLEDGE

Direct observations of oceans, land surfaces, the atmosphere and glaciers have made it possible for scientists to state with more than 90 percent certainty that Earth's climate is warming and human activities are driving the change.

The measurements come from a range of observation networks (weather balloons, ships, weather stations, satellites and ocean buoys) that crisscross the planet, sampling air and water and transmitting data to scientists around the globe.

NOAA, NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, universities, international scientific institutions and others collect and analyze the data that feed complex computer-based climate models. The models produce illustrations of the climate on a global scale to a generalized timeline.

“The ocean of sensor data makes for good science but its benefits outside that realm remain limited,” Ronald Sugar, chairman and chief executive officer of Northrop Grumman Corp., said during a December 5, 2008, briefing in Washington on climate change and Earth observations.

“What if all that raw environmental data could be turned into practical, decision-quality knowledge for use by the greater society,” he asked, to help inform public policy and business decisions at a regional or even local level?

GLOBAL CHANGE, LOCAL EFFECTS

Climate change is a planetary process but its effects are already at work at regional and local levels ― experienced by those involved in coastal development, weather forecasting, ecosystems and wildlife, agriculture, fisheries, power generation, conservation, water services, public health, emergency response and other activities.

A system of regional decision-support centers, Sugar suggested, could act as knowledge portals accessible to national, regional, local and private decision-makers who will be responsible for dealing with the effects of an evolving climate over 10 years or 20 years or 100 years.

Such centers, David Green of NOAA’s National Weather Service in Washington told America.gov, “would go beyond warning and give people real understanding of not only what’s impending but what to do about it — a full package of knowledge” for each sector that will be affected.

Climate forecasts create opportunities for society to prepare, Edward Miles and colleagues wrote in a 2006 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, “An Approach to Designing a National Climate Service.”

“The impacts of the 1997–1998 El Nino on the U.S., predicted with 6 months’ notice as a result of improved climate observations and other forecasting advances, cost the U.S. an estimated $4.2 [billion]-4.5 billion (1998 dollars) and 189 lives,” the authors, from the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington-Seattle, wrote.

But an estimated 850 lives were saved and as much as $19.9 billion in economic gains were realized as a result, according to the study.

INTEGRATING OBSERVATIONS

The first function of a National Climate Service, Miles’ team wrote, is to integrate global, national and regional observations infrastructure to produce information and assessments useful to those involved. The service, they said, should be run by the director of NOAA’s Climate Program Office, which now administers observations and research.

During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Green said, the National Weather Service gave Louisiana and the other affected states 56 hours notice that the Category 3 storm would make landfall.

“They had the information,” Green said, “but they didn’t have knowledge on the ground about the roles of the federal agencies and the roles of the state and local agencies. They were arguing — what’s the state role, what’s the local role — that knowledge wasn’t there.”

“A climate service would actually produce knowledge,” Chet Koblinsky, director of NOAA’s Climate Program Office, told America.gov. “It would monitor, it would develop predictions and capabilities and allow a dialogue with the user community and provide that interaction.”

More information on a potential National Climate Service is available at the NOAA Web site.

See also “Obama Makes Climate Change a National Priority.”