Trying not to lose

http://www.spacenews.com/policy/110208-house-earth-science-funds-manned-spaceflight.html

The point of the article is a bunch of lawmakers who want to reorient NASA back to human spaceflight. They will do this by taking climate monitoring funding, referred to in the article as global warming funding, away.

I believe a policy like this does 3 things: gives lawmakers the power to control research directions (even if only on this one particular goal), it hurts the climate monitoring via satellite initiatives that we sorely need, and it presumes to send humans back to the moon via, I assume, the constellation program.

I don't think the moon is a good goal and I really like that commercial space transport and delivery is making significant accomplishments via SpaceX and Orbital Technologies. This is good but not great news, since I doubt these companies will profit much. I think we need to think big like Mars. The challenges Mars poses are grand. Materials science, engineering, biochemistry, chemistry, biology, psychology, psychiatry, nanotechnology, etc will all need to be utilized in a major way. It could be the sputnik moment. Of course, the obvious problem is that a Mars trip is one way, right now. And that is why the moon is the next "best" thing.

The satellite issue is important since both weather and climate rely on satellite monitoring. Satellite development is long and expensive but it pays in science even though it costs a ton. The most exciting in my mind is soil moisture which the US has not been able to do, but the Europeans have. Why does NASA do satellites and climate monitoring? Because its a natural fit. They build them, launch them, and monitor them. No other agency is qualified to do that.

The controlling of research dollars and directions by lawmakers ...well...I don't care to comment on that at the moment. These are people trying to save jobs at home to guarantee continued employment for their constituents. But really it aligns with their re-election priorities and that's why it makes more sense to them. The status quo is desirable for jobs and who can blame them. Keep what you have so you don't have to risk asking for money for new job development in your region. especially in a floundering economy.

I don't really have a good sense that this budget stuff will help without a reorganization of our goals ... both public and private. I like slogans like "win the future" because really what we have been doing is trying not to lose. We need high risk high reward activities and they cost money. It will take money and the will to take big risks. But trying not to lose is not working.

Brief Comment on Climate Change

I read this today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

I think Krugman makes a good point. It is one I have written about before.

Let me say that I don't know if "crisis" is the correct word to use. Higher prices, sure, but not relative to 2007. Economies are more sensitive to weather, absolutely. And as I blogged a few days ago, under the type of climate change I believe we are in, the variability increases with respect to extremes (floods and droughts, heat waves and cold spells, etc). Whether this increased variability would occur under different climate states or different rates of change of climate states, I don't know.

The point is that this type of global weather impact can not only be disruptive and expensive, it points out how vulnerable we are to climate change. This problem will only get worse as more people require more food. Human expansion has also resulted in the fading away of the family farm, and as the current global economic crisis continues more farm subsidies will be on the chopping block as budgets get reigned in. Thus it is the human-earth system that we need to understand. I know first hand that many groups are working on these challenges both academically and through the government.

It will be a while before we know if this is the "first taste" of our vulnerability but I strongly doubt it was. Debate will rage as economic, agricultural, and climate and weather related issues all conspire in various degrees. What is clear is that we remain vulnerable. Technology may have helped in the last 90 years, but it won't save us.

I take exception

A recent article appeared on Foxnews.com that I found noteworthy.

I wish to challenge the notion that anyone, with any certainty, can use any recent weather event no matter how large as a sign of or lack of global climate change. Climate as we all should know is about statistics. It will take a decade or longer to know how epic this latest blizzard was.

What Al Gore got correct was the scientific evidence. He correctly stated that under global warming scenarios it has been shown that variability increases. And even during a warming trend, globally, there can be dips, significant dips (even negative anomalies) regionally. This evidence suggests that this CAN be part of global warming scenarios. Of course we don't know the reverse because I am not sure that anyone has done a global cooling experiment. Please enlighten me if such a study has been done.

The second issue I wish to be picky about is the notion of predictions associated with climate. We are assuming a CO2 increase in what can only be described as complex models, but models that do not represent the full coupled climate system. This is necessary because building complex models requires a solid foundation upon which to add complexity. And unfortunately by building complex models we can not say that a model error at this point is actually wrong because all the processes we observe in the real world are not present in the model. It is an interesting problem to say the least. One that is being tackled on the weather side as well.

What we do know is that as model resolution improves we get better, but not perfect solutions. That is good news for weather and climate. But long term climate prediction is still not an initial value problem. Though some argue this point feverishly. It is a true scientific issue and debate will continue in the scientific arena, not in the media.

Speaking of media:

            "If it all seems confusing and contradictory, other experts say, the real blame lies not with the     climate, or with science, or even scientists or former politicians, but with the incompetent media for failing to provide critical context for readers. "

Indeed. In this very article! Examine it closely. The first half of the article presents one side and then trails off into the other side and only by the late middle does context begin to appear. And then just as context settles in, they bring in the 1970's cooling argument. This argument was created and propagated by press reports which misrepresented the science. Which makes it irrelevant in the current discussion.

And then they close by stating that science changes! Of course science changes. It does so because we update our theories based on new evidence, new data, new analysis. And yes even scientists can be wrong. They go where the science leads them and not every avenue leads somewhere or even leads to the correct somewhere. Thats why we attempt to make results reproducible.

We call it climate change because we know way more about the weather and climate and can state with confidence that change is the best way to describe it. Some regions will warm, others may cool. Some will get more precipitation, others less. It is an important scientific distinction. It is not changing the message, however. 

Climate change is not contentious because the science is weak. It is contentious because the science is young. It is further complicated because of the economic impact any action on carbon emissions might have. Scientists still have the duty to warn about impending climate fluctuations or even climate change. And the climate scientists have spoken, in consensus, to warn us about the effects of increasing CO2. They do so with uncertainty; the range of possible warming scenarios. They do so with caution. What our policymakers should be doing is deciding how to act responsibly not deciding which science is correct. The science updates all on its own. 

What is not easily updated is how well scientific communication occurs between scientists and policymakers, scientists and the public, and policymakers and the public.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/03/worsening-winters-come-global-warming/#ixzz1Cx8RXypD

Comments on Climate Change adaptation

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/matthew-kahn-answers-your-climatopolis-questions/

A couple of comments:
1. "Most people live in cities". This may be True but there are alot of people who live on the coastline.

2. "If the world had 1 bald guy there would be no Rogaine." I don't think that one follows logically from the other. rather, there was a need to invent Rogaine because 1 guy didn't like being bald or figured out bald people don't like being bald. This is capitalism. Not adaptation. Adaptation would have been the bald guy figuring out that some chicks dig dudes with no hair or wearing a nice hat. After all Rogaine was a solution to a problem, whereas adaptation is learning to live with the problem or (more my way of thinking) not treating your lack of hair as a problem.

3. "Free market  capitalism will protect us from climate change." The free market built up our coastlines while hurricanes went slightly dormant for a 20 year spell. And when they raged back alot of people lost their homes on the coastline ... see point 1.

4. "People update their probabilities as new information arises." And Monkeys fly out of my ass... People are generally good at assessing their risk. People are generally bad about acting timely on that risk because they misjudge based on imperfect information. Its why people in New Orleans and East decided to stay put. They had good intel. BIG storm surge, powerful hurricane, strong winds. They had heard this and the evacuation orders. Some still stayed citing previous experience with hurricanes. Some 1700 people died. They updated their probabilities but we will never know how much weight they assigned to those probabilities.

5. I like the eternal optimist: "Educate the citizens about heat waves." Perhaps you are more likely to survive if you can afford, and consequently purchase an air conditioner. But first, after I update my probabilities, I realize that a heat wave just happened and wont return for at least a while so i will wait. I will wait because my first priority will be to put food on the table instead of waiting 1,2,5,10 years before the next heat wave hits.

6. "In Climatopolis, I assume that such a dramatic event would occur gradually." Rarely has drought been gradual. It is sudden and lasts for a while. The impacts are slow because first you realize you are in a drought after the drought has started (reminds me of a recession, or a post-recession). Then you realize you have find some method of rationing which is gradual and increases as the length of the drought increases. Afterall predicting how, where, when, and why a drought is relieved is no easy business.

But this is the point. These opinions make certain assumptions about the rapidity of discrete events. They also make assumptions about the rapidity of innovation to discrete events. Maybe you can take Einstein as an example: from mathematics failure to patent guy teaching himself mathematics. That took time and experience and a whole host of other factors. With climate there may not be sudden achievable advances with which to adapt. rather we will have to know not just our next set of circumstances but the ones after that. We will have adapted in some ways, over time, but we are not built to continually adapt (henceforth accelerated adaptation).

Certainly the community (academic, industrial, manufacturing) we have built is adapting and it shows. Bio-diesel from corn, algae or whatever. But that is one maybe two steps forward but no less realizable on a global scale. The ideas will come out, with this I agree. But, will the time it takes to realize these ideas come faster and faster as the need, not just arises, but indeed accelerates?

This is why climate change science needs to be done. We need to understand the possible outcomes, or impacts of regional climate change. People will have to be making decisions in advance, with limited information. Only this will apply to those who have the means to afford those decisions in advance. Some of us live month to month, day to day and simply cannot afford to make decisions without some sense of certainty (picking up and moving to a new area without the means to support oneself with a job all based on uncertain information with no timetable of when "climate change" will occur.

perturbations: the real fear of climate change

I always like to look at problems from a different perspective.

Lets adapt a new perspective. Suppose you dont buy into the "end of the world from climate change". What do you buy into? Recessions and depressions, hurricanes, tornado outbreaks, earthquakes?

The real fear that I have related to climate change is the subtle perturbations to the overall nonlinear behavior of the earth-human system. After all the recent earthquakes, it is easy to see how devastating these disasters can be. Hurricanes and tornadoes also have something in common with earthquakes: how quickly they devastate a vast area, and how quickly they alter your life, your surroundings, and your perspective.

Climate change will be more subtle. The impacts will be regional. The effect will be tempered by how we respond to it. I tend not to think about the magnitude of the change since that is uncertain. I think more generally about how that change will be so slow compared to our collective attention span (both in a human sense and in a financial priority sense).

The slowness would be like the financial sector meltdown we just experienced. It wont effect everyone equally at least at first. But when the full effect is felt it will already be too late.

This is not a liberal agenda. It is a warning agenda. I feel more comfortable knowing that people are warning me of these impending dangers. A lot like the people of hawaii likely felt when an invisible tsunami approached. They got out of the way and luckily nothing major happened. They were uncertain of its magnitude and yet they acted as if it was going to be big.

What helped was that there was little else going on. There were no distractions. The warning went out early, it was a slow Sunday, and the wave wasn't going to until noon or something. So the perturbations can be distractions or other disasters or other human failure events. Imagine a future war takes up our time and resources. or an earthquake, or other disaster.

Will it cost money to prepare? Yes. Will any human plan be foolproof? No. But it is fortuitous that the very important things we NEED to do be doing are actually beneficial to us and out stewardship of the planet. Cutting greenhouse gases is important.

Need we be reminded that we polluted the planet so badly that we almost removed the ozone layer? And recent estimates put its replacement around 2060. So dont be fooled by the sceptic agenda that CO2 concentrations are so small that they don't matter. The science has a long way to go. You should be encouraged that we are making progress and that the problems seem tractable to get some reasonable answers.

Remember this next time you are in a tornado watch. No models predict tornados directly. Forecasters predict the environment that tornado's are most likely to form in conditional upon thunderstorms forming, and that those thunderstorms will rotate, and that of those that rotate some might produce a tornado (of unknown strength, size, and lifetime). That is a 4 step process. And only when there is a storm with a particular signature does a warning get issued (unless a sighting precedes the radar update). Does that make you think the science is wrong? Or do you take cover when the warning is issued?

Climate change hodgepodge

Lets be clear about a few things:
1. Projection is not the same thing as Prediction. Coupled global climate models used in the IPCC AR4 are used for projections. They start from a climatological state of the "current" climate. They do not initialize the model with the current state of the ocean.

2. From ice core data, CO2 concentrations have varied 100 ppm (from sub 200 to sub 300) over the last 400,000 years! By 2050, in a business as usual scenario the projection is for CO2 to climb to 450, and by 2100 achieve 950 ppm.

3. Temperature responds largely to solar increase in first 800 years and combination of solar/GHG the remaining thousands of years.

4. The anthropogenic forcing change is 1-2 W/m2 and is roughly equal in magnitude to the solar forcing change (solar variability is roughly 1.6 W/m2).

5. If the sun (increase in shortwave forcing) were largely responsible for the recent observed warming, the whole atmosphere should be warming. Tropospheric temperatures aloft have been in decline for the last 35 years while surface temperatures have been warming.

6. GCMs project that GHG forcing is more significant in the currnt climate than solar variability.

7. Even in a warming scenario, it is still possible to have a neutral or negative temperature trend during a decade.

So, let us assume that warming happens. What is the big deal?
A. It is likely that food production area's will shift due to changing temperature and precipitation. This is possible over the Great Plains even if the warming isn't extreme. China could also be potentially vulnerable to this changing climate. We already know that Africa has experienced some changes like this leading to long droughts, shortfalls of food, and revolution.

B. Some other changes could be earlier snow melt combined with either less or more snowfall over the Cascade or Rocky mountains. The snowfall in the west in winter provides water during the summer when it melts. Changing this time of snowmelt may leave these vulnerable areas without water later in the summer.

So, it is for these reasons, these local reasons that scientists communicate the impacts early. It takes time to adapt to these types of changes and mitigation can only help in the short term. Longer term its all about adaptation largely based on economics.

We all have to separate the science and opinion from this issue. There are scientific facts. They are not subject to opinion without evidence via the scientific method. Although it is in the theory stage, Idon't hear much politicized discussion questioning the speed of light

ozone

Recent EOS article highlights what a little chemistry, meteorology, and billions of dollars in satellite remote sensing can do. Cant link to the article so I searched for this less than perfect article:

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2006/06/29/scientists_find_antarctic_ozone_hole_to_recover_later_than_expected.html

The ozone hole will recover in 2068, and signals for this recovery may not be visible until 2018.

This problem is similar to what we see with CO2. Add now, deal with it for decades to centuries.
Remember, we turned off most ozone depleting chemicals, but it will still take another 59 years for recovery. Is it any wonder that most scientists agree that global warming is for real? The time scale may be large and the effects seemingly small for now, but add a hundred years and there will be serious climate changes.

taxpayers and climate change

People are so hung up on conspiracy. Global warming is real. For how long and why are still being evaluated. Two reasons for the uncertainty exist:

1. coupled atmosphere ocean models yield a wide range of scenario's and the models are not well understood due to the inherit non-linearity of the problem. One aspect is the resolution of the model. Finer resolution means a better answer. Not the best, but better. One aspect that has received little attention: model physics. There is no money for physics development. only science. Model development is good. dynamics and numerics, distributed memory computing.

2. Physical process understanding across scales and across disciplines. atmosphere vs ocean: oceanic processes impact the atmosphere and the atmosphere impacts the ocean. clouds and aerosols: clouds can be hindered or enhanced by aerosols (type, concentration, etc), greenhouse gases and their effects on radiative heat transfer, clouds, etc.

The recent joint statement on needs of the weather and climate community is nothing new. However, there is big chance here to increase scientific funding that CAN and WILL have a positive impact on taxpayers. Lets count the ways:

1. Fuel. Do you know who plows the streets, sprays for mosquitoes, patrols the streets? The government spends a lot of money to not only predict the weather to save on fuel but also to manage those resources in an emergency. That is if you anticipate a storm, you have a much better chance of saving on fuel and supplies. Now couple that with knowing in advance that you or the neighboring county will actually use a large amount of supplies, well then you get the bulk discount.

2. disaster preparedness and response. Money is usually not the answer. Supplies, equipment, and manpower are more valuable. All cost money. But rushing in supplies and poorly distributing them requires extra effort, extra manpower and more money.

3. rebuilding. Look at NO, or greensburg KS. years later and progress, but not fully rebuilt. More money needed.

4. Tornado's cause sudden and intense damage. Mitigation is not a viable option. However, you can save lives. Politicians care about lives. Hurricanes can be mitigated. Oil rigs and pipelines shutdown, facilities secured, planes, cars, boats, ships, freighters moved, people relocated temporarily, infrastructure secured, etc. short to medium term prediction is a valuable asset.
Knowing when you will need to increase item 2 budget's priceless.

This touches on a few items. I am sure there are more. The joint statement asked for 9 billion over 5 years, essentially doubling the budget over the previous 5 years. Just like oil drilling will take a decade to impact prices at the pump, so will this investment. No promises offered though.

I will say this. People are already promoting using weather data to their advantage on wind power, industry is generating forecasts to be sold for use in everyday businesses. the profits are huge for the industry that gets it right. The savings potential to customers is high. We are taking tailored forecasts here. Not NWS watches, warnings, forecasts for public safety use or recreation.

We are talking, saving on fuel by telling a truck 300 miles away to divert around a storm that will strike 4 hours hours from now along his protected path. This will save everyone money and time. best of all, a taxpayer investment will actually benefit the taxpayers for the foreseeable future. It really is that simple for the taxpayer.

the science will mature without these funds. It will take twice as long. Only twice as long because computer hardware is doubling according to Moore's law. Petascale computing is here. We need it to be here. The benefits to society will take just as long, in my opinion.

Lets say tens years with funding forthe science, another 5 for the societal benefit to be realized tangibly. had funding commenced in 02, we would be a decade away. Without funding, 12-15 years for the science, 5-7 for the tangible benefit. so by 2025, we will make progress on using weather data. thats 20 years. A 3 day forecast today is as good as a 1 day forecast was ten years ago. In ten years we should expect that to double: 7 day forecast as good as a 3 day forecast now.

But if we cant get the climate right, we have no hope of mitigation. because by 2025 people will be more skeptical of diverting funds to climate prediction when increased sea level takes out your summer vacation plans, or a hurricane ravaged your tropical vacation. maybe it was the freak snowstorm that took out power to your county for ten days. maybe it was the heat wave that knocked out power for 3 weeks, and when it was restored, you are paying a higher rate because that electricity needed to be bought from another state.

The climate changes. The funding climate must change too. It starts by asking your politicians to invest early in the science.

climate change

Thanks to a lot of work done by Dr. Harold Brooks and collaborators, the U.S. climate change science programs report included information on severe convective storms. There was enough in the report to show the valuable work done by Brooks and collaborators. What was missing was what occurred this year with regard to severe storms:
A. Multiple EF5 tornados, and
B. Extreme Flooding brought about by severe storms

One interesting point is that the reanalysis data doesnt show changes in severe storm environments concurrent with changes in tornado reports. Either the problem truly requires a mesoscale depiction to identify the environment [reanalysis is too coarse] or the parameter relationships do not describe the potential for severe storms. This latter part means that more variables need to be considered or at least scaled, or a distributions approach needs to be taken.

While models are incapable of producing the heavy rainfall associated with severe convective storms, I have not seen a method to estimate the potential heavy rainfall associated with a severe storm environment. Obviously this would be of great interest since the US is especially vulnerable to flood (more agricultural production for food, fuel, and livestock) and drought more by economic considerations rather than true vulnerability (poor placement of cities, homes, overdevelopment in areas prone to flood). The Floods of 08 (June) and 93 (July) redefined record flooding.

20 river crest records broken in 93 were in the st louis area. Iowa set a number of records, and the recent levee breaks in and around St Louis may make breaking records tough, but no doubt this a record year for flooding.

Policy changes are needed to keep people and property sustainable. We are at more risk. Not because of increased weather, but because our society is more dependent on the status quo. More development means more risk. More risk leads to more money being spent to keep current. fewer people can handle that risk because they dont have the money. A lot of people take the chance. And a lot of people lost this year (some may have been misled into not getting flood insurance). I am thinking now that climate change may have more impact on HOW we do business, HOW we treat our planet and each other, than on actually changing the climate.

No doubt the climate is changing. The question is: how much will we?