Investigating Weather and Climate Information Needs and Decision-Making
"Scientific understanding of weather and climate has expanded dramatically, but the integration of that knowledge and its application to societal needs remains a grand challenge" (NCAR Strategic Plan, 2006). This strategic priority statement represents, along with NCAR's education goals, the primary thrust of the SERE program and enjoys contributions from all three of the SERE divisions.
ASP contributes to this goal through postdoctoral fellows working with ISSE and CCB, while ISSE's research bridges the gap between atmospheric and related sciences and societal decisions, by examining how scientific information is used, and how policy and management decisions are made with uncertain or incomplete information. ISSE contributes valuable insights on when, where, and how science can best be part of societal decisions.
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) AR4
Background:
The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program jointly established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide comprehensive and authoritative periodic assessments of the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC assessments are based on peer-reviewed scientific and technical literature, and they are written by teams of authors from all over the world who are recognized experts in their field. The IPCC process is unique in terms of the disciplinary breadth, global scope and transparency of the scientific effort.
The Fourth Assessment of the IPCC was completed this year, with substantial contributions from SERE/ISSE scientists. In recognition of the immense value to humanity of this effort, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to the IPCC and to Al Gore. In particular, members of the IPCC were recognized "…for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".
Accomplishments FY07: Milestones and outputs
SERE/ISSE Scientists made major contributions to the Nobel Peace Prize winning IPCC effort by serving in various capacities as authors of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
• Patricia Romero Lankao played a leading role on the Working Group II Report: Climate Change 2007 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, by serving as a Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 7, “Industry, settlement, and society.” In that role, she collaborated with Tom Wilbanks, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in sharing primary responsibility for guiding the development of the chapter, coordinating the contributions of multiple lead authors, and ensuring adequate responses to reviewer comments.
• Linda Mearns served in two capacities – as a Lead Author on Chapter 11 “Regional climate projections” of the Working Group I Report: Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis, and as a Lead Author on Chapter 2 “New assessment methods and the characterization of future conditions" of the Working Group II Report.
• Kathleen Miller served as a Lead Author on Chapter 3 “Water resources and their management” of the Working Group II Report.
• Rick Katz served as a Contributing Author on Chapter 11 “Regional climate projections” of the Working Group I Report.
• Susanne Moser served as a Contributing Author on Chapter 6 “Coastal systems and low lying areas” of the Working Group II Report.
• Claudia Tebaldi also played a dual role: as a Contributing Author on Chapter 11 “Regional Climate Projections” of the Working Group I Report, and as a Contributing Author on Chapter 2 “New assessment methods and the characterization of future conditions” of the Working Group II Report.
Climate change has now been established as the most crucial environmental problem facing the world today. This work is having a significant impact on public perceptions of climate change, its implications and individual and collective response options. All of SERE/ISSE's contributors to the IPCC effort are engaged in substantial follow-up work aimed at better informing policy makers and the broader public. In addition, their ongoing research efforts are building upon and extending the work reported in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Reports.
A very successful press teleconference was held at NCAR on the principal new messages in the Working Group II report. The emerging importance of combined adaptation and mitigation efforts were particularly underscored. There is a growing perception that the center of the climate change issue has shifted from climate science to determining how society can cope with climate change.
While this activity is technically completed with the release of the Reports, in FY08 the SERE/ISSE scientists will continue to give presentations and grant media interviews regarding the report results.
SERE's involvement in the IPCC is funded by the National Science Foundation.
WCIASP: Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program
Climate and weather create hazards and opportunities for society at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Assessment science seeks to examine and enhance the processes and methods for generating and communicating scientific knowledge to improve decision-making. The WCIASP focuses on critical gaps in the weather and climate arenas that are particularly challenging for decision-makers and scientists alike. These areas can be encompassed in the following three categories: (1) characterizing uncertainty; (2) extreme weather and climate events; and (3) the role of climate in human health.
This program, directed by Linda Mearns and managed by David Yates of RAL, began in SERE as an initiative and was transformed into a permanent part of the ISSE program in FY05.
The cross-cutting themes are reflected in specific scientific objectives that are being addressed in this program. ISSE scientists are developing ways to characterize uncertainty that include new techniques for developing probabilistic information about regional climate projections. This is also being carried out in the NARCCAP assessment. Furthermore, an integrated project on uncertainty is underway that embraces physical system impacts and decision making in the context of water resources. The project uses the probabilistic information developed from future climate model projections, and uses them in a water resources model to establish likelihoods of different water flow levels in several basins in California. The second theme, extreme weather and climate events, is being explored within the WCIASP through analyses of intense extreme weather and climate phenomena in climate models that are important to society (e.g. thunderstorms, tornadoes) and development of an extremes toolkit, which allows for the easy application of extreme value methods to climate data. More projects within the WCIASP are also included in the Extremes section of this report. The third area, the role of climate in human health, is explained in the section under Climate and Health.
In FY08 these projects will continue to develop. The integrated uncertainty project will be expanded to include other water basins throughout the western US; the third workshop on climate and health will be held in the summer; and the extremes project will expand to explore changes in extremes in high resolution future climate projections.
Collaborators:
Barb Brown, Eric Gilleland, Matt Pocernich, RAL;
Caspar Ammann, E. Obbink, Gordon Bonan, Keith Olsen, CGD;
Johannes Feddema, U. Kansas;
Harold Brooks, University of Oklahoma;
Gene Wahl, Alfred University;
Eve Gruntfest, U. Colorado, Colorado Springs;
Sheldon Drobot, U. Colorado;
Steve Sain, Doug Nychka, Eve Furrer, IMAge;
Rick Katz, Joanie Kleypas, Kathleen Miller, Susi Moser, Joseph Tribbia, Julie Demuth, Olga Wilhemi, ISSE.
Modeling Hurricane Evacuation Decision-Making
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| Simulated hurricane evacuation behavior in a proof-of-principle model. |
Evacuation is one of the most important mitigation strategies for dealing with the hazard presented by hurricanes. There are many powerful and sophisticated models of traffic used to help deal with the problems of evacuation, but even the best of those models are driven with simplistic assumptions about who will choose to leave a locale and when they will evacuate in response to a predicted on-coming storm.
In FY07, Seth McGinnis led and worked with NCAR visitors and collaborators from local universities to develop a strategy for the creation of a computer model of the decision-making processes that members of a population use in deciding whether and when to evacuate. This model integrates two existing statistical models of evacuation in the framework of an agent-based model (ABM), which is further enhanced by adding a social networking component. The collaborators developed a simplified proof-of-concept model and a synergistic research plan that incorporates basic social science research in the form of focus group studies at Denver University and policy analyses at CU-Denver with the modeling effort conducted at NCAR.
Once the strategy is advanced, focus groups will collect data from past and potential future evacuees in Galveston and New Orleans that will feed into the model development. The results of the model will then be brought back to the focus groups for evaluation and validation by the people whose decisions are being modeled. Sensitivity analyses of the model will inform policy studies, and vice-versa. The results of this research will help to improve the effectiveness of hurricane evacuation, both by providing better forcing data for traffic models used in planning and by providing insight into the effectiveness of different kinds of policy interventions and the importance of different dynamics and demographic factors in the decision-making process.
Collaborators include Brian Bush and colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Robert Harriss (HARC), Sandy Johnson (DU), and Brian Muller (CU-Denver).
Preliminary work on this initiative is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Developing and Disseminating Likelihoods of Future Regional Climate Change
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| Probabilistic climate change projection for the southwestern United States. PDF of change in average summer precipitation under the AIB emissions scenario for 2080-2100. |
In FY07, Claudia Tebaldi, NCAR Lead Scientist, continued work on developing probabilistic information about future climate change. For this work, the probabilities are generated from a Bayesian statistical model using output from multiple global climate models (GCMs). The probability distributions describe the range of likelihoods of change in monthly, seasonal, or annual temperature or precipitation for a particular area at a particular time in the future, given assumptions from one of the IPCC emissions scenarios.
This type of information is very useful to stakeholders, such as water resource managers, who can use the probabilities of climate change to determine likelihoods of changes in resources such as hydrologic flow or crop yields. Probabilities of changes in crop yields have recently been produced using the Tebaldi et al. method in collaboration with colleagues at Stanford University . The information can also be used directly to provide insights about how likely certain types of changes in climate in the future will be. The regional scale is the scale at which this type of information is most often needed for resource managers.
In FY07, Tebaldi and colleagues further developed the Bayesian statistical model so that probabilities of changes in temperature and precipitation could be calculated simultaneously. This advance renders the modeled temperature and precipitation information much more useful as input to impacts models, such as water resource models.
To make the probabilistic information available to a wide range of interested users, Seth McGinnis led the development of an automation of the probabilistic models of future climate change. The resulting website, rcpm.ucar.edu (RCPM stands for Regional Climate-Change Probabilities from Multi-Model Ensembles), allows the user community the opportunity to employ global change science by accessing likelihoods of change in future climate for a user-specified region of interest.
Pre-generated analyses are available for regions around the world and sub-regions within the United States, and users can also request an analysis for a custom region. Users of this service have included representatives of the governments of the Seychelles and the Gambia; researchers interested in climate change in the Ethiopian rift valley, Tajikistan, the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, and coastal regions in Asia; and researchers working with water utilities in Colorado and the western United States.
Plans for the coming year are to continue providing custom analyses and website support, improve results in coastal regions, and begin automation of the recently-developed bivariate version of the analysis, which produces joint probability distributions of temperature and precipitation.
Collaborators include Doug Nychka (CISL/Image), Richard Smith, U. of North Carolina, Bruno Senso, University of California, Santa Cruz, David Lobell, Stanford University, Kathy Miller (ISSE), David Yates (RAL), Brian Petersen (UC Santa Cruz), Dawn Magness (University of Alaska, Fairbanks), Joel Smith (Stratus Consulting), and Carolyn Wagner (Stratus Consulting).
This research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, including funding from the NCAR Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program, with additional funding from AwwaRF.
Lessons Learned about "Lessons Learned" about Hurricane Katrina
In FY07, CCB collected, organized, and discussed the lessons learned about Hurricane Katrina. It will convene a workshop/conference during FY08. The full title of the workshop will be "Lessons Learned about Lessons Learned about Hurricane Katrina." Numerous lessons have been identified by a wide range of organizations (governments on local to national levels, non-governmental organizations, corporations, government agencies, and academic institutions). Using the Hurricane Katrina situation as a jumping-off point for assessing why it is that most lessons identified during and following a disaster (natural or anthropogenic) are not applied to address the problems that have been identified.
The conference will convene an international, multidisciplinary gathering of stakeholders and will be designed to provide, as an outcome, an improved understanding of the notion of "lessons learned." Several universities will be involved in this activity as presenters and discussants.
This activity is supported by NSF through its support of the SERE Laboratory.
Beijing 2008 Olympics Forecast Demonstration Project
The Third Workshop of Beijing Forecast Demonstration Project, September 2007.
CCB's Qian Ye is contributing to the Social and Economic Impacts Assessment of the Beijing 2008 Olympics WWRP/WMO (World Weather Research Programme/World Meteorological Organization) Forecasting Demonstration Project (FDP), which is sponsored by the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) and the Beijing Commission on Science and Technology's Five-Year Plan (2005-2009).
Experience from the Sydney 2000 Olympics FDP indicated that a successful social and economic impact assessment study could help the FDP establish a greater awareness of end-user requirements, raising the level of communication and feedback associated with the provision of weather services. In 2004, WWRP experts strongly recommended the inclusion of a study of social and economic impacts of FDP activities in order to better understand how the operational forecasters and end-users (e.g., the Olympics Organizing Committee, the aviation community) would benefit from FDP projects in their decision-making process.
Approved by the CMA, Qian Ye was appointed by the Beijing Meteorological Bureau to lead a local research team, with CCB Director Michael Glantz as advisor, to conduct a five-year-long research and education activity for the Beijing 2008 Olympics Weather Service.
Since FY05, this project has focused not only on conducting basic research activities (such as surveying various user groups, collecting feedback from the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, and educating decision-makers who are the potential users of FDP products), but more importantly training the local research team in order to develop the local capacity of the economic impact study. Glantz visited the Beijing Meteorological Bureau numerous times in the past three years to train the team members. Based on research results, several reports have been submitted to the CMA leaders. As a result, the CMA is now including social and economic impact assessment information in its operational protocol, and most provincial meteorological bureaus in China are subsequently paying more attention to the users' needs in their activities. This work has also helped the Beijing Olympic 2008 FDP international team to learn how to conduct a successful international research project in developing countries.
During the summer of 2008, the DFP will be formally launched, and the future activities will focus mainly on collecting real-time feedback from the Beijing Olympics, forecasters, the general public, and business decision-makers.
Communicating Uncertainty in Weather Forecasts to Benefit Users
Effectively communicating weather forecast uncertainty is a major challenge for the weather community. Weather forecasts are inherently uncertain, and recent scientific and technological developments are helping meteorologists better characterize uncertainty. Yet most weather forecasts today still contain little or no uncertainty information. Without this information, forecasts can easily be misinterpreted and misused in decision-making with potentially disastrous social and economic consequences in hazardous events. Communicating forecast uncertainty effectively on an every basis is also important to help forecast users make more informed decisions.
Although this challenge is recognized by the American Meteorological Society, the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS), and the forecasting private sector, the meteorological community has limited understanding of how to communicate weather forecast uncertainty effectively to a range of users (National Research Council 2006). Improving this understanding requires interdisciplinary (social – physical science) research. To address this, we developed a nationwide, web-based survey addressing related fundamental questions, including people's uncertainty-related interpretations of current weather forecasts, understanding of current uncertainty forecasts, preferences for deterministic versus uncertainty-explicit forecasts, and preferences for uncertainty communication formats. The results provide important background for future uncertainty communication research and to inform policy decisions on uncertainty forecasting. This project also contributes to NCAR Goal 1, priority 2; Goal 2, priority 2; and Goal 3, priority 3.
In FY07, SERE scientists and collaborators implemented the survey, completed preliminary data analysis, and discussed results at several conferences. In FY08, work will continue by disseminating results via submission of a peer-reviewed journal article, conferences presentations to the research community, and discussions with key organizations that communicate weather forecasts (e.g., the NWS). FY08 plans include the development of further research in this area to: (1) explore people's interpretations of and preferences for additional types of uncertainty-explicit forecasts, including graphics; (2) investigate how these interpretations and preferences depend on the weather situation, communication medium, and other factors; and (3) examine factors underlying people's interpretations and preferences. Further work with weather forecasting organizations, such as the NWS, will be advanced to collaborate on research and translate research findings into operational changes and practices.
National Research Council, 2006: Completing the Forecast: Characterizing and Communicating Uncertainty for Better Decisions Using Weather and Climate Forecasts. National Academies Press, 124 pp.
Research collaborators:
Jeff Lazo, PhD, NCAR Lead Scientist, Societal Impacts Program / Research Applications Laboratory / Institute for the Study of Society and Environment
Rebecca Morss, PhD, Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology / Institute for the Study of Society and Environment
Julie Demuth, Institute for the Study of Society and Environment / NCAR Research Applications Laboratory
Alan Stewart, PhD, University of Georgia, Department of Counseling and Human Development
This research is supported by NCAR's Collaborative Program on the Societal Impacts and Economic Benefits of Weather Information (SIP), which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through its U.S. Weather Research Program.
The Role of Institutions in the Use of Climate-Relevant Information
Cities are both significant emitters of carbon dioxide and centers of innovations that may contribute to de-carbonizing our societies. Local authorities should be included in mitigation efforts for addressing climate change; however, few studies have analyzed how local authorities use knowledge on climate in urban areas in middle- and low-income countries. ISSE provides in depth analysis of how local authorities use scientific information to formulate mitigation and related policies. Research undertaken in Latin American cities and financed with grants from the Global Change Sys Tem for Analysis, Research and Training (START) and the Inter-American Institute (IAI) for example, suggests that a process of social learning regarding climate change has taken place. Although these urban centers are not big emitters of carbon dioxide, in comparison to cities in high-income nations, local authorities have developed a refined framework, strategies and institutional structures to target air quality, the main local concern, and to relate it to climate change; authorities hence “localized” carbon emissions by relating them to an existing local agenda. As in cities from high income countries, epistemic communities (academic groups), policy networks (e.g. International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, ICLEI) and individuals have been key in launching a carbon and climate agenda at the urban level during the last years.
Management is not only about framing an environmental problem; it also relates to what measures authorities design to actually deal with it in terms of one set of causes and effects instead of others. In short, it refers to whether policy makers can and want to go beyond declarations of good-will by introducing actions such as allocating resources to undertake the declared measures. Policy making on climate change is strongly constrained by the fact that environmental authorities in the region lack monies and influence over the key secretaries, ministries and offices that need to act for purpose of both mitigation and adaptation.
Policy making on climate change in Latin American cities also has been constrained by other institutional factors. In Mexico City for example, the political reform taking place in the context of decentralization during the 1990s did not change such features as centralization, complexity and fragmentation. The diverse coordinating commissions and programs created to deal, at the city level, with such relevant issues as urban planning, transportation and environment do not appear to have allowed authorities to create much coordination thus far. Diverse factors explain this occurrence. The disparity between the fiscal capacity of the Federal government and the Federal District, on the one hand, and of the states and municipalities, on the other, leads to a paradox: more responsibilities are delegated to local authorities, but they lack the resources to undertake effective policies. Authorities do not have both a culture of cooperation and a common and broadly-shared metropolitan vision, which may be due to the effects of both election laws and governing by diverse parties. Further, the government lacks other features of institutional capacity (e.g. human resources, money, and power) to manage air quality and greenhouse gas emissions.
Research Team:
Paty Romero-Lankao, PhD, NCAR Lead Scientist, Deputy Director, SERE/ISSE
Climate and Health
SERE scientists are researching the complex interactions between climate processes, ecosystems, and human health in order to improve projections of climate impacts on human health and the health of the planet. This research will also help to 1) determine appropriate adaptations to potential threats to human health; 2) sort out the complex relationships between climate and ecosystems; and 3) help educate the next generation of researchers in these complex interwoven areas.
Project : Health Risks from Climate Change and Variability in Wisconsin. Started in FY06, this project concerns the analysis of the effect of extremes in temperature and precipitation on human health (morbidity) in Wisconsin and Chicago. Relationships between these extremes (heat waves as well as extreme run-off from extreme precipitation) and human morbidity are being examined. In FY07, observed temperature data and health data have been analyzed, and significant relationships obtained. In FY2008, the relationships between observed conditions will be completed and potential changes in morbidity under conditions of climate changed determined. Potential adaptations (how we can cope with increased heat stress) to the new climate regime will also be explored.
Research Team:
Linda Mearns, PhD, Lead Scientist, Director, SERE/ISSE
Collaborators: Jonathan Patz, University of Wisconsin
Steve Sain, Bo Li, CISL/IMaGe,
Mary Hayden, PhD, SERE/ISSE/ASP
Workshops on Climate and Health: (This topic is also very relevant to NCAR Goal 2, Priority 2, Building Capacity for Coping with Weather and Climate Hazards.)
The effects of climate on human health are a very sensitive and complex area of impacts research. It is also one that society is most concerned about when facing climate change. Careful training is necessary to perform high quality research in this area. Two very successful interdisciplinary workshops on Climate and Health were conducted by ISSE (FY04 and FY06), where graduate students learned from a wide range of experts how to develop complex interdisciplinary health projects. These workshops form part of the Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program (WCIASP) within ISSE. The next biennial workshop will take place in FY08, with a theme on the individual and combined effects of heat stress and air pollution. This topic reflects the growing concern regarding these combined stresses on human health. The workshop will also link with the on-going research in ISSE regarding heat stress.
Research Team:
Olga Wilhelmi, PhD, SERE/ISSE Lead Scientist, Director, Geographic Information Systems Initiative
Collaborators: Mark Wilson, PhD, University of Michigan
Jonathan Patz, PhD, University of Wisconsin
Kris Ebi, PhD, Stratus Consulting,
Sandy Johnson, PhD, Denver University
Sari Kovatz, PhD, London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Project on Future Urban Human Health: A new project that reflects an integrated approach to coupled human and natural sciences begun in F07 which is also under development in ISSE, "Future Urban Human Health," concerns the potential effect of climate change on increased heat stress and pollution in major cities in developed and developing countries. It will also examine critical feedbacks between potential adaptations to heat stress and unintended feedbacks on air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. This feedback is becoming critical in understanding how to combine goals of adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. The project will be further expanded and developed with SERE/ISSE and SERE/ASP scientists during FY08, and a proposal will be submitted to the NSF Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) program.
Research Team:
Linda Mearns, ISSE
Christine Wiedinmeyer, ACD
Fei Chen, PhD, RAL
Olga Wilhelmi, PhD, Paty Romero Lankao, PhD, Mary Hayden, PhD, ISSE
Steve Sain, PhD, CISL/IMAGe
Johan Feddema, PhD, U. Kansas
Serena Chung, PhD, U. Washington
Karen Tomic,PhD, U. Delaware
Sandy Johnson, PhD, Denver University
Climate and Ecosystem Health Initiative: During FY07 work began to develop a new initiative on Climate, Ecosystem Change, and Human Response. Numerous challenges face ecosystem health in the presence of rapid climate change. These challenges include: responses of ecosystems to changes in nutrients and levels of carbon dioxide; relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services; models linking ecological and social processes; and communicating the complexity of ecosystem services.
To begin this initiative, a small forum has been proposed for FY08 to engage experts in both ecosystem-climate interactions and human-ecosystem interactions. The forum will be designed to identify the most salient research topics where NCAR can use its climate expertise, and involve experts in collaborative research.
These activities are supported by the SERE Laboratory through its funding from NSF, specifically the WCIASP, the US EPA, NASA, and NOAA.
Research Team:
Joanie Kleypas, PhD, Lead Scientist, SERE/ISSE
Extreme Value Methods as an Integrative Element in Weather and Climte Impacts Assessment
Extreme events are the focus of much attention in assessments of the impacts of weather and climate. Yet the methods used still tend to be rather ad hoc, lacking any theoretical justification. This project calls for a more sustained effort to establish extreme value theory as the appropriate foundation on which to base statistical aspects of such assessments, thus playing an integrative role in impact assessment.
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| Marcus Walter, SOARS protege, explaining his summer project |
During the past year, the development of methods based on extreme value theory was completed for the verification of forecasts of weather extremes, particularly of below freezing minimum temperatures (e.g., as used by orchardists to decide whether to protect the buds of fruit trees). Consistent with the results of extreme value theory, methods were devised to improve the simulation of precipitation extremes by stochastic weather generators, a technique commonly used to produce scenarios of climate variability or change in impact assessment. Related to the ISSE project on “Temperature Extremes and Coral Bleaching,” methods were developed to estimate an upper bound on sea surface temperatures in the tropics to ascertain whether increasing trends are consistent with the thermostat hypothesis. Using data corrected for shifts in societal vulnerabililty, extreme value theory was also able to detect an increasing trend in the frequency of damaging hurricanes, but not in their associated damage. The question of how best to extend the concepts of “return period” and “return level,” used to communicate the uncertainty about an extreme event, to a changing climate was examined, establishing that only one of the two common interpretations (i.e., based on either expected waiting time or on expected number of events) can be retained.
Future work include the new topic of using extreme value theory to devise methods for detecting trends in weather spells, such as heat waves.
Research team and collaborators:
Richard Katz (NCAR/ISSE), Philippe Naveau (LSCE/CNRS, France), Barbara Brown (NCAR/RAL), Matthew Coleman (former SOARS protégé, Citadel Investment Group), Eva Furrer (NCAR/IMAGE), Eric Gilleland (NCAR/RAL), John Henry (Oregon St. Univ.), Joanie Kleypas (NCAR/ISSE), Matt Pocernich (NCAR/RAL), Marcus Walter (SOARS protégé, Pennsylvania State Univ.), George Young (Pennsylvania St. Univ.)
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, including funds from the ISSE Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program.
Tools for Biocomplexity in the Environment
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| Map of Argentina showing the case study locations |
The goal of this activity is to develop tools that facilitate end-to-end uncertainty analysis in assessments of the economic impacts of seasonal to annual variations in climate on agriculture. It is part of a broader multidisciplinary project on “Climate, Agriculture, and Complexity in the Argentine Pampas” (www.rsmas.miami.edu/groups/agriculture/), involving collaboration among researchers from various institutions in the U.S. and Argentina from a wide range of disciplines including agronomy, economics, hydrology, political science, psychology, and statistics.
An improved stochastic weather generator for producing scenarios of daily weather has been developed, based on the statistical approach known as generalized linear modeling (GLM). The improvements include being easy to program, straightforward to incorporate covariates such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon, and amenable to uncertainty analysis. For more information about this newly developed GLM weather generator, see www.image.ucar.edu/~eva/GLMwgen/index.shtml.
Although this particular project is ending, a new closely related project on “Interactions between Changing Climate and Technological Innovations in Agricultural Decision-Making: Implications for Land use and Sustainability of Production Systems” will soon begin. The new project will again focus on the Argentine Pampas and involve the same set of stakeholders. The NCAR component of this project will focus on the development of tools to produce scenarios of daily weather for input to agronomic models that reflect the variation in climate on a decadal time scale.
Research team and collaborators:
Richard Katz (NCAR/ISSE), Eva Furrer (NCAR/IMAGE), Guillermo Podestá (Univ. Miami), Balaji Rajagopalan (Univ. Colorado)
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, including funds from the Program on Biocomplexity in the Environment/Coupled Natural and Human Systems.
Assessing the Use and Value of Weather Information to the Transportation Sector
Economic analyses are increasingly important to the meteorological community. These analyses help justify and evaluate programs as well as guide programmatic investments, especially as many agencies that support weather and climate services face resource constraints. Nevertheless, weather forecast value and related topics are often touted but rarely studied. An exception is a recent study performed by NCAR and collaborators of 11 economic super sectors, which found that, for the transportation sector, U.S. economic output varies by nearly $10 billion a year ($2000 GDP) due to weather variability (Larsen et al. 2007).
To further explore weather impacts on the transportation sector, a broad assessment is being conducted of how the transportation sector uses and values weather forecast information. Focusing on five sub-sectors of the transportation sector—air, rail, water, motor carriers, and pipeline—this assessment is eliciting information from sub-sector experts in academia, the private sector, and government. This expert elicitation methodology asks questions about: (1) respondents' sector-related background and experience; (2) general activities and economics of the sub-sector; (3) the nature and extent of weather impacts on the sub-sector; and (4) perceptions on the use of, needs for, and value of weather information in the sub-sector.
This research is planned for two phases. Phase I began late in FY07 and will continue through the first quarter of FY08. It consists of individual, semi-structured interviews with sub-sector experts to refine key aspects of the project. Contingent upon funding, a second phase will be conducted in FY08 consisting of acquiring broader expert input through a web-based survey, which will be formulated based on input received during the interview phase.
Larsen, P. H., M. Lawson, J. K. Lazo, and D. M. Waldman, 2007: Sensitivity of the U.S. Economy to Weather Variability. Working Paper September 6, 2007 . Research Applications Laboratory. National Center for Atmospheric Research. Boulder, CO.
Research collaborators:
Jeff Lazo, PhD, Lead Scientist, Societal Impacts Program / Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) / Institute for the Study of Society and Environment (ISSE)
Julie Demuth, SERE/ISSE; RAL
Emily Laidlaw, SERE/ISSE
This research is supported by NCAR's Collaborative Program on the Societal Impacts and Economic Benefits of Weather Information (SIP), which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the U.S. Weather Research Program. This research is a cooperative effort between the Societal-Environmental Research and Education (SERE) Laboratory and the Research Applications Laboratory.
Applying Ethics to Analyze Hydrometeorological Prediction and Flood Decision Making
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The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) considers flooding “America 's Number One Natural Hazard”. Although flood-related scientific information is improving and substantial resources are spent on flood management, floods continue to cause major damage and significant deaths each year. To reduce the negative impacts of flooding, a better understanding of the interactions between hydrometeorological prediction and flood decision-making is needed, so that scientists can provide more useful information and decision makers can make better informed decisions.
Ethics provides a unique perspective for examining the interactions between scientific information and decision making. In this project, researchers with different interdisciplinary expertise applied a formal ethical framework to analyze these interactions in flood hazards, focusing on the 1997 Red River flood in Grand Forks, ND and East Grand Forks, MN. A record flood was predicted for the Red River in 1997 weeks in advance, and the two communities spent weeks preparing. Yet the communities and residents were unprepared for the severity of the flooding. The flood devastated Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, causing more than $2 billion (1998 dollars) in damage to property and infrastructure, and some residents lost nearly everything. Some people blamed the National Weather Service for a bad forecast, but residents, local officials, and other federal agencies also bear some responsibility.
In FY07, the research team completed the ethical analysis of this case and submitted a manuscript to the journal Environmental Hazards. In FY08 and beyond, the researchers will continue to disseminate the results, and they may expand the project to apply the ethical framework to other cases (such as Hurricane Katrina) if funding and personnel resources are available.
Research team:
Rebecca Morss, PhD, Lead Scientist, ESSL/MMM and SERE/ISSE
Eugene Wahl, PhD, Professor and Research Scientist, Alfred University, Alfred, NY
Understanding How Weather Forecasters and Emergency Managers Use Information
Winter storms making landfall in western North America cause floods, landslides, high winds, and other hazards that cause significant damage and loss of life. Providing weather forecasters and decision makers with additional information about approaching storms can help alleviate these negative societal impacts. Designing programs to provide such information requires knowing what types of information are most useful and valuable to different stakeholders. To address this issue, a collaborative NOAA-NCAR project investigated how different types of information are used by forecasters and emergency managers, focusing around extra meteorological observations taken during the California Land-falling Jets (CALJET) and Pacific Land-falling Jets (PACJET) Experiments. The project included interviews with forecasters, emergency managers, and other stakeholders, as well as participant observation sessions in National Weather Service offices.
Generalized weather event decision cycle for emergency management personnel.
Results from the project document how NWS forecasters integrate information to generate weather forecasts, and they illustrate how forecasters used CALJET/PACJET data to fill in key observational gaps. They also examine how weather forecast information is used in emergency management decision-making. Given the on-going debate about the role of humans in the weather forecasting process, these results elucidate the important roles that human forecasters play in integrating information and in translating forecasts to provide value to forecast users. The results can also inform future projects that seek to provide useful information for operational forecasting, emergency management, and other societal decisions.
In FY07, the research team completed publication of a manuscript in Weather and Forecasting and disseminated the results at conferences and to various stakeholders. Plans for FY08 include continuing to disseminate the results to the research community and to policy makers in NOAA. Contingent on funding, a follow-on project may also be developed in FY08 focusing around the Hydromet Testbed – West and the use and value of hydrometeorological information in California water resource management.
Funding sources for CALJET/PACJET project: NSF through NCAR, NOAA. Funding sources for Hydromet Testbed project: NSF through NCAR Societal Impacts Program
Research team for CALJET/PACJET project:
Rebecca Morss, PhD, Lead Scientist, ESSL/MMM and SERE/ISSE
F. Martin Ralph, PhD, NOAA
Research team for Hydromet Testbed project:
Jeffrey Lazo, PhD, Lead Scientist, RAL/ISSE
Jenifer Martin ( University of Colorado / RAL)
Julie Demuth (ISSE/RAL)
Rebecca Morss, PhD, Scientist, ESSL/MMM and SERE/ISSE
F. Martin Ralph, PhD, NOAA
Estimating Water Usage and Vulnerability with Remote Sensing
Map of soil types used in plant growth model for Hidalgo Country, TX study area.
NCAR researchers have provided support to a research project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to estimate water usage for irrigation using remote sensing data. Satellite imagery can be used to estimate the amount of plant matter grown in an agricultural field between two passes. A computer model of crop growth then provides an estimate of the amount of water needed to produce that growth, and subtracting natural precipitation results in the amount of water used in irrigation.
This is a new method, and successful development will allow for the estimation of water usage in areas where administrative records are unavailable. These data will empower researchers interested in issues of water vulnerability to study areas all over the world.
During FY07, SERE/ISSE scientists worked to define a test study region along the Rio Grande River in Texas for acquisition of data to validate the method. They procured relevant weather and soil data for this region and made these data available to collaborators at NASA. In the coming year, the NCAR researchers will continue to provide supporting data, such as root zone depths for different crops, and aid in the acquisition of agricultural and irrigation data.
CCB is hiring a graduate research assistant to travel to Turkmenistan during FY08 in order to undertake background research on land use practices in a designated area in Turkmenistan, identifying water use, soil type, groundwater level, temperature, evaporation rates, and land use practices, such as open ditch irrigation, wells, etc.).
Research Team:
Robert Harriss, PhD, Houston Advanced Research Center
Michael Glantz, PhD, SERE/CCB
Seth McGinnis, SERE/ISSE
Marc Imhoff, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
This research is supported by NASA and NSF.