michael h. glantz
Michael Glantz in Hanoi at the WMO/NCAR/Water Resources University Prototype Workshop on Water Affairs, shown here with a bust of Ho Chi Minh (December 2006). During FY07, Dr. Glantz continued to travel extensively, giving several invited presentations around the globe. He traveled to Vietnam, Sweden, Kenya, Alaska, Peru, Thailand, Japan, Switzerland, and made four separate trips to China in support of the "Affairs" activities.
He gave numerous invited papers and speeches on subjects such as "Hurricane Katrina as a Teachable Moment," "Climate Affairs: Usable Science for Society," "The Aral Seas: Creeping Environmental Disaster," and spent a week in Tokyo, Japan, giving three lectures to students attending the United Nations University's International Course 2007: Environmental Change: Managing Risks. Glantz has traveled to Tokyo for the past five years to act as a resource for this activity. More information about Glantz is available at his website.
Conferences and Workshops
Glantz organized an international conference held in December 2006, with the financial assistance of the National Science Foundation and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The workshop was developed by Glantz and Claudio Caponi, Water Resources Program Officer with the WMO. The meeting was held at Water Resources University in Hanoi, Vietnam, to introduce the multifaceted concept of Water Affairs to hydrologists, hydro-meteorologists, and to explore the interactions in the Greater Southeast Asian region about climate, water, and weather, and the impacts of those interactions on societies. All presentations and a full report are available at the workshop website at http://www.ccb.ucar.edu/waf.
During FY07, Glantz and Qian Ye, project scientist in CCB, also assisted in the development of two new Climate Affairs centers in China, one in Harbin, near Manchuria, and the other in Shanghai, China. They also began preliminary negotiations to hold a major undergraduate conference on Climate Affairs in Shanghai during July 2008, just prior to the Beijing Olympics. A link to the website will be available in the near future on the CCB website at http://www.ccb.ucar.edu/.
Research Activities
Glantz has been working on the development of three major research activities during FY07: these are dimensions of the Climate Affairs notion — Coastal Urban Affairs (megacities on the coast); Spare Time University (delivery of climate, water, and weather related information for education and training purposes); and expanding the idea of Climate Affairs to include "Climate, Water, and Weather Affairs." A description of each of these activities, as well as other Climate Affairs developments, is available on the SERE Laboratory's Annual Report (LAR) website under the Table of Contents.
In addition to his research activities, Glantz also prepared a book in 2007 that was published by Tsinghua University Press in Beijing, China (see link to more information about this publication below). More than a dozen researchers contributed sections to this book. The book was prepared to help to educate the general public about the importance of understanding early warning systems in today's societally challenging setting.
He also continues to periodically update his personal "blog" at fragilecologies.com. He created the Fragilecologies website in order to write articles for those who use the Internet in search of information on topics related to climate-society-environment interactions. Other topics are also addressed under a section called “Up close and personal.”
Publications
Glantz, M.H., 2007: Aral Sea Basin: A sea dies, a sea also rises (available by permission in PDF). Ambio, 36 (4), 323-327.
Glantz, M.H., 2007: Heads Up! Early Warning Systems for Climate, Water and Weather. Beijing, China: Tsinghua University Press. 173 pp.
Glantz, M.H., 2007: Prototype Training Workshop on Water Affairs. Proceedings of workshop held 4-7 December 2006 in Hanoi, Vietnam. Boulder, CO: NCAR.
Glantz, M.H., 2006: Hurricane Katrina rekindles thoughts about fallacies of a so-called "natural" disaster. In: P.S. Ranade (Ed.), Natural Disasters: Management and Preparedness, 138-147. Hyderabad, India: ICFAI University Press.
McPhaden, M.J., S.E. Zebiak, and M.H. Glantz, 2006: ENSO as an integrating concept in earth science. Science, 314 (5806), 1740-1745. doi:10.1126/science.1132588.
Funding Sources
The research and these activities are supported by the National Science Foundation through its support of the SERE Lab, as well as additional funding from the WMO.