Climate Engagement

Posted on | February 11, 2010 | No Comments

NOAA Awards Grants — Coastal residents, businesses and decision-makers around the country will consider how their communities can adapt to climate change through eight newly awarded NOAA National Sea Grant College Program grants.

Each of these $25,000 climate engagement mini-grants will support projects focused on preparing for changing climate conditions. The projects will be led by principal investigators from local Sea Grant programs and NOAA Regional Collaboration Teams in eight regions including Alaska, the Pacific Islands and sections of the mainland United States.

“Since our Sea Grant researchers and extension agents serve the local coastal communities in which they live, Sea Grant is well-suited to connect NOAA science to the needs of local coastal communities,” said Leon Cammen, Ph.D., director of the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program. “Issues related to climate change are a Sea Grant priority.”

The Mini-Grants will fund projects in the following regions:
* Alaska Region – To produce a short video on the effects of climate change on Alaska and how Alaska marine-dependent communities can plan for adaptation. The video will be a focal point of community workshops around the state and will be shown on statewide television and on the Internet. Principal investigators: Paula Cullenberg, Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Amy Holman, NOAA Alaska Regional Coordinator.

* Central Region – To sponsor the Native Peoples and Native Homelands II Workshop to give NOAA and Sea Grant opportunity to engage Native American, Alaskan and Hawaiian people on climate variability and impacts on tribal communities. Principal investigators: Bethany Hale, NOAA Central Regional Coordinator and Penelope Dalton, Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington.

* Great Lakes Region – To create training modules to prepare leaders of coastal communities around the Great Lakes to develop climate adaptation plans necessary to keep their communities safe and productive into the next century. Principal investigators: Rochelle Sturtevant, Great Lakes Regional Sea Grant Extension Educator of Michigan Sea Grant and Elizabeth Mountz, NOAA Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management.

* Gulf of Mexico Region – To present a week-long training session for local government, Sea Grant and NOAA staff on how local communities can adapt to impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, increased flooding and more extreme weather events. Following the workshop, participants will be able to continue collaborations through a discussion forum on the NOAA Coastal Storms Web site. Principal investigators: Buck Sutter, NOAA Gulf of Mexico Regional Team leader; Karl Havens, Florida Sea Grant College Program at the University of Florida; and LaDon Swann, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium.

* North Atlantic Region – To establish a regional network of “climate ambassadors” through training for staff of NOAA’s North Atlantic Regional Team and Sea Grant extension agents. Sessions will cover the latest science as well as climate information and tools available from NOAA. The initial trainees will hold local training sessions in their home states. Principal investigators: Peyton Robertson, NOAA North Atlantic Regional Team leader and Sylvain De Guise, Connecticut Sea Grant College Program at the University of Connecticut.

* Pacific Islands Region – To prepare a Pacific Climate Change Impacts Resources Guide. Funding supports production of two stand-alone chapters of the guide planned for educators. The guide is for use in a larger effort of climate outreach and education activities. Principal investigators: Darren Okimoto, University of Hawaii Sea Grant; Eileen Shea and Lynn Nakagawa, NOAA Integrated Data and Environmental Applications Center/Pacific; and James Weyman, NOAA National Weather Service Climate Information System.

* Southeast and Caribbean Region – To establish a regional network of climate extension and outreach professionals and strengthen the network’s ability to provide information, tools, and assistance related to climate change impacts and adaptation. This project will bring extension and outreach personnel together to share information and will maintain a network for on-going communication. Principal investigators: Charles Hopkinson, Georgia Sea Grant Program at the University of Georgia; Jessica Whitehead, South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium; Stephanie Fauver, NOAA Coastal Services Center in Charleston, S.C.; and Geno Olmi, NOAA Southeast and Caribbean Regional Coordinator.

* Western Region – To present a workshop to engage recreational fishers, resource managers, scientists, and environmentalists in assessing and planning for climate change impacts on West Coast fisheries. The workshop will be the first step toward implementing a climate change plan for West Coast fisheries. Principal investigators: John Stein, NOAA Western Regional Team leader and Penelope Dalton, Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington.

The Climate Engagement Mini-Grant Program is modeled after the NOAA Stakeholder Engagement Mini-Grant program, which distributed grants in 2009 to fund regional pilot projects engaging communities in issues of interest to both NOAA and local residents. The goal of the new program is to leverage NOAA and Sea Grant resources to help coastal communities adapt to climate change.

Sea Grant is a nationwide network of 32 university-based programs that work with coastal communities. The National Sea Grant College Program engages this network of the nation’s top universities in conducting scientific research, education, training, and extension projects designed to foster science-based decisions about the use and conservation of our aquatic resources.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

The Sea Level Is Expected to Rise / Image Courtesy of Quest Expedition 2001

Commerce Department Proposes Climate Service

Posted on | February 10, 2010 | No Comments

New office would target nation’s fast-accelerating climate information needs NOAA launches www.climate.gov as portal for climate science and services.

Individuals and decision-makers across widely diverse sectors – from agriculture to energy to transportation – increasingly are asking NOAA for information about climate change in order to make the best choices for their families, communities and businesses. To meet the rising tide of these requests, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced the intent to create a NOAA Climate Service line office dedicated to bringing together the agency’s strong climate science and service delivery capabilities.

More and more, Americans are witnessing the impacts of climate change in their own backyards, including sea-level rise, longer growing seasons, changes in river flows, increases in heavy downpours, earlier snowmelt and extended ice-free seasons in our waters. People are searching for relevant and timely information about these changes to inform decision-making about virtually all aspects of their lives.

“By providing critical planning information that our businesses and our communities need, NOAA Climate Service will help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change,” said Secretary Locke. “In the process, we’ll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.”

“Working closely with federal, regional, academic and other state and local government and private sector partners, the new NOAA Climate Service will build on our success transforming science into useable climate services,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “NOAA is committed to scientific integrity and transparency; we seek to advance science and strengthen product development and delivery through user engagement.”

Leaders from numerous public and private sector entities support the creation of NOAA Climate Service:

“Addressing climate change is one of our most pressing environmental challenges. Making climate science more easily accessible to all Americans will help us gain the consensus we need to move forward,” said Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy. “The new NOAA Climate Service is a welcome addition. It will help bring people together so we can also bring about an economic recovery by more rapidly modernizing our nation’s energy infrastructure.”

“NOAA has consistently led the world in climate research and observation,” said Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change. “Businesses, communities and governments will rely even more on its expertise and the critical information it provides to make informed decisions based on the best science available. Through NOAA’s improved climate services we will be better able to confront climate change, and the many challenges it presents for our environment, security, and economy.”

“The establishment of NOAA Climate Service will be an important step forward in helping the nation better understand and forecast the changing climate. The Navy’s Task Force Climate Change looks forward to working closely with NOAA Climate Service to ensure that both the nation and the Navy are best prepared for the future challenges posed by climate change,” said RADM Dave Titley, oceanographer of the Navy and director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change.

“NOAA’s reorganization to consolidate its formidable capabilities relating to climate science and services in a single office is an important step forward in the larger effort of harnessing relevant capabilities across all the executive branch agencies to help citizens and businesses plan for and cope with climate change,” said Shere Abbott, associate director for environment and energy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

To see what other leaders from government, business, science and environment are saying about NOAA Climate Service, and to get additional information, visit http://www.noaa.gov/climate.

Unifying NOAA’s climate capabilities under a single climate office will integrate the agency’s climate science and services and make them more accessible to NOAA partners and other users. Planning has been, and continues to be, shaped by input from NOAA employees and stakeholders across the country, with close consideration given to the recommendations of the NOAA Science Advisory Board, National Academies and National Academy of Public Administration.

NOAA Climate Service will encompass a core set of longstanding NOAA capabilities with proven success. The climate research, observations, modeling, predictions and assessments generated by NOAA’s top scientists – including Nobel Peace Prize award-winners – will continue to provide the scientific foundation for extensive on-the-ground climate services that respond to millions of requests annually for data and other critical information.

Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, will serve as transitional director of NOAA Climate Service. New positions for six NOAA Regional Climate Services Directors will be announced soon and will provide regional leadership for integrating user engagement and on-the-ground service delivery within the Climate Service.
NOAA Launches Landmark Climate.gov Portal

NOAA is also unveiling today a new Web site – http://www.climate.gov – that serves as a single point-of-entry for NOAA’s extensive climate information, data, products and services. Known as the NOAA Climate Portal, the site addresses the needs of five broadly-defined user groups: decision makers and policy leaders, scientists and applications-oriented data users, educators, business users and the public.

Highlights of the portal include an interactive “climate dashboard” that shows a range of constantly updating climate datasets (e.g., temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and sea level) over adjustable time scales; the new climate science magazine ClimateWatch, featuring videos and articles of scientists discussing recent climate research and findings; and an array of data products and educational resources.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Rare Earthquake Hits Illinois

Posted on | February 10, 2010 | No Comments

Chicago, IL — Magnitude 3.8 earthquake

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 at 03:59:33 AM at epicenter
Distance: 65 km (40 miles) WNW (292°) from Chicago, IL

EARTHQUAKES IN THE STABLE CONTINENTAL REGION
Most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains has infrequent earthquakes. Here and there earthquakes are more numerous, for example in the New Madrid seismic zone centered on southeastern Missouri, in the Charlevoix-Kamouraska seismic zone of eastern Quebec, in New England, in the New York – Philadelphia – Wilmington urban corridor, and elsewhere. However, most of the enormous region from the Rockies to the Atlantic can go years without an earthquake large enough to be felt, and several U.S. states have never reported a damaging earthquake. The earthquakes that do occur strike anywhere at irregular intervals.

Earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains, although less frequent than in the West, are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).

FAULTS
Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep. Most of the region’s bedrock was formed as several generations of mountains rose and were eroded down again over the last billion or so years.

At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. All parts of this vast region are far from the nearest plate boundaries, which, for the U.S., are to the east in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, to the south in the Caribbean Sea, and to the west in California and offshore from Washington and Oregon. The region is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even most of the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few earthquakes east of the Rockies can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. In most areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards is the earthquakes themselves.

Substitution and Technological Change Under cap-and-trade

Posted on | February 8, 2010 | No Comments

World Bank
by Considine, Timothy J. ; Larson, Donald F.

The use of carbon-intense fuels by the power sector contributes significantly to the greenhouse gas emissions of most countries. For this reason, the sector is often key to initial efforts to regulate emissions. But how long does it take before new regulatory incentives result in a switch to less carbon intense fuels? This study examines fuel switching in electricity production following the introduction of the European Union?s Emissions Trading System, a cap-and-trade regulatory framework for greenhouse gas emissions. The empirical analysis examines the demand for carbon permits, carbon based fuels, and carbon-free energy for 12 European countries using monthly data on fuel use, prices, and electricity generation. A short-run restricted cost function is estimated in which carbon permits, high-carbon fuels, and low-carbon fuels are variable inputs, conditional on quasi-fixed carbon-free energy production from nuclear, hydro, and renewable energy capacity. The results indicate that prices for permits and fuels affect the composition of inputs in a statistically significant way. Even so, the analysis suggests that the industry?s fuel-switching capabilities are limited in the short run as is the scope for introducing new technologies. This is because of the dominant role that past irreversible investments play in determining power-generating capacity. Moreover, the results suggest that, because the capacity for fuel substitution is limited, the impact of carbon emission limits on electricity prices can be significant if fuel prices increase together with carbon permit prices. The estimates suggest that for every 10 percent rise in carbon and fuel prices, the marginal cost of electric power generation increases by 8 percent in the short run. The European experience points to the importance of starting early down a low-carbon path and of policies that introduce flexibility in how emission reductions are achieved.

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