Announcement – World Climate Conference-3 in Geneva 31 August – 4 September
By Jay Pearlman, posted on August 2nd, 2009 in Announcements, Climate, Earth Observation
Earth information scientists and world leaders from 150 countries, the European Commission and many NGOs are attending the World Climate Conference-3 (WCC-3) in Geneva, Switzerland, 31 August – 4 September 2009. “Climate prediction and information for decision-making” is the conference theme.
The conference, organized by the World Meteorological Organization, will focus on climate predictions and information for decision-making at the seasonal to multi-decadal timescales. The goal is to create a global framework that will link scientific advances in climate predictions and the needs of their users for decision-making to better cope with changing conditions. Key users of climate predictions include food producers, water managers, energy developers and managers, public health workers, national planners, tourism managers, as well as society at large. The conference includes both technical sessions and a plenary for international leaders addressing climate-related issues. The conference also aims to increase commitment by world leaders to climate observations and monitoring in order to better provide climate information and services worldwide.
This is the third world climate conference organized by WMO. The first two World Climate Conferences, in 1979 and 1990, were groundbreaking in their impacts, heralding awareness of climate change and new observational and research capacities to monitor and understand the climate.
NASA Daily Image
Remnant of a Supernova
Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the galaxy. The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1-0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way. Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion. Data suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion. Another intriguing aspect of G350.1-0.3 is its unusual shape. Many supernova remnants are nearly circular, but G350.1-0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas. The age of 600-1,200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1-0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant. These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech