Alex Steffen, co-founder of Worldchanging.

Steffen, a Seattle-based writer who helped create the best-selling “Worldchanging” book and website, will give the keynote speech at this year’s IEEE Professional Communication Society conference at the University of Cincinnati. He offered an advance look at his Oct. 17 talk during a recent interview with Earthzine.

Steffen says his message is focused on two central themes: The degree to which small steps can result in big changes, and the need to better educate the public on scientific findings that demonstrate the need for action.

“It’s hard work, but we actually do know we can make things better than they are now,” he said.

“I personally believe that what we need to do is not lower our ambitions in order to do things that feel easy, but to raise them.”

One example is efforts toward achieving sustainability, such as building carbon-neutral cities and providing more environmentally friendly products to the masses.

See Earthzine to Hold Third Annual Essay and Blogging Contest on Sustainability.

Leaders need to think about the strategic systems where intervention will pay off over time, such as urban planning, Steffen said.

“If you try and approach the problem of a metro area’s transportation emissions by small steps of changing the actual vehicles, the odds of us getting where we need to go are very small,” he said.

“On the other hand, we know transportation emissions are directly related to land use. Compact communities tend to drive less.”

Creating denser communities also results in increased use of public transportation, more walking, and people who don’t own cars at all.

“The most sustainable trip is the trip you never had to take,” Steffen added. “What you end up with is a city where emissions drop much, much more quickly than they would if you were trying to change it vehicle-by-vehicle.”

From that come other benefits, he explained. More physical activity results in better health and less emissions result in cleaner air. Infrastructure also is less costly to build and maintain in denser communities, and such areas can enjoy a larger tax base.

Steffen thinks there’s low awareness among the world population when it comes to the concept of sustainability. “But if you describe it as more general principles — not taking out more than nature is able to put back in, that sacrifice people’s long-term ability to live — those are human ethics that almost everybody understands.”

Still, there aren’t enough people who grasp the basics of topics like climate science, and the profound effect that human-induced changes to the planet could have on the ability of humanity to survive.

(See Changing the Media Discussion on Climate and Extreme Weather)

“My sense is that we have a unique design problem in front of us, which is learning to tell stories that respect the accuracy and complexity of our attempts to understand the world, but that also are digestible and understandable to people who are really lacking some of the basic knowledge needed to participate in that process,” Steffen said.

“We have discussions within our professional fields, but that takes for granted all sorts of insight into the nature of the world and the scientific process that understands that things are complex, but we can still talk about uncertainties and acknowledge that we have what we believe are a working set of insights.”

One of the big challenges is learning how to better describe the systems that run our planet, our relationships to those systems, and what we’re learning about how those systems are changing. In that sense, the connection to Earth observation is direct, he said.

“Satellites, for instance, are our eyes on the planet,” Steffen said. “What we learn through the data generated tells us a lot about the systems around us.”

Observations taken from the sky or on the ground also can identify huge problems that aren’t immediately noticeable to the naked eye.

“I think that if those of us who care about science informing our decisions in life and in policy want to see a good outcome here, we have to be smart about how we communicate the insights that we’re having and observations and conclusions we’re drawing from those things, so they make sense to a wider group of people.”

The “Worldchanging” book, first released in 2006, is in its second edition.

Steffen is now working with Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit design services firm that aims “to build a more sustainable future through the power of professional design.”

For more information on Steffen and his work, see alexsteffen.com.

Jayaraman Srinivasan chairs the Divecha Centre for Climate Change in Bangalore. Source: Indian Institute of Science.

The goal of India’s Black Carbon Research Initiative (BCRI) is to better define soot’s impact by developing a national inventory of black carbon sources, initiating long-term atmospheric monitoring of aerosols, and improving models to tease out soot’s role in glacial melting and climate change. The proposed collaboration by more than 100 Indian institutions and 65 observatories nationwide was advanced by Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for environment and forests from 2009 until this summer, who earned a reputation for putting environmental science and conservation ahead of political and development interests. At the launch, Professor V. Ramanathan, the Indian-born director of the Center for Clouds, Chemistry and Climate at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and an expert on aerosols and climate, said the “ambitious” program positioned India to be “second-to-none” on aerosols research and black carbon.

Earthzine recently spoke with Jayaraman Srinivasan, the climate modeler who Ramesh tapped to lead the BCRI. The conversation took place following the appointment of a new environment minister and, as a result, Srinivasan focused his remarks on the scientific and political context for black carbon research, rather than on the BCRI itself. He is chair of the Indian Institute of Science’s Divecha Centre for Climate Change in Bangalore and the country’s leading authority on black carbon.

India plans to enhance monitoring of black carbon and other aerosols. New monitoring sites (yellow) will reinforce an existing network of surface observatories operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (blue and red). Source: March 2011 Science Plan for India’s Black Carbon Research Initiative.

Srinivasan: It started with Professor Ramanathan’s 2001 report about the Asian brown cloud and the monsoons, which garnered considerable media attention in India. The way it was portrayed was that this mass of aerosol pollution over the Indian Subcontinent would cause the imminent demise of the monsoon. But the impact of aerosols on the monsoon was not so clear. It’s not like CO₂, where after a century of work we have a good idea of how it controls climate. Aerosols are a comparatively new animal, and black carbon is unique. Whereas sulphate aerosols reflect sunlight back into space and thus cool Earth’s surface, soot simultaneously shades the surface and, by absorbing some light, heats the atmosphere. They were looking at the cooling that soot causes at the surface and projecting a weaker monsoon circulation and devastating droughts, but they were forgetting about the heating in the atmosphere. As subsequent research such as that by William Lau at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center showed, the atmospheric heating actually enhances the monsoon.

Earthzine: Today some policymakers and scientists – Ramanathan included – are raising the alarm over black carbon’s contribution to global warming and glacial melting. Are they jumping the gun again?

Srinivasan: Unfortunately, the subject has become politicized. Some are suggesting that black carbon should be controlled aggressively through international treaties to quickly arrest climate change. That to me is completely red-herring. We suspect it is a political red herring. We are surprised that people are advocating policy measures so early into the research on black carbon. One should not jump into policy issues until the science is well understood.

Earthzine: How about the connection between black carbon and climate? Could scientists such as Ramanathan be correct that black carbon’s warming impact may be greater than CO₂’s in regions such as the Himalayas where soot emissions settling onto snow and ice can directly accelerate their melting?

Srinivasan: The issue of black carbon on glaciers was first studied in great depth in the Arctic region, where the surface is white and even a small amount of black carbon will greatly increase heating. In the Himalayas, however, a large number of glaciers are already brown with debris. When I first visited them I said, ‘Where is the glacier?’ because the surface was all covered with dirt and rock. That may actually insulate the glacier, so it is not clear that soot falling on top will accelerate melting. People are extrapolating from the pristine ice of the Arctic that’s as white as can be, and that’s not right. Let’s make actual measurements, gather a few year’s worth of data and carefully calculate the impacts. Let’s do some serious research before we prescribe policy options.

Earthzine: Are the Himalayan glaciers melting? There has been some doubt surrounding that since the IPCC’s 2007 statement that they would be gone by 2035 was shown to be unfounded.

Srinivasan: Because of one poor citation in the IPCC report the whole thing has become controversial. To me, it’s very clear because Indian scientists have been monitoring thousands of glaciers for the last 20 years (though some of the best data came in pretty late for the 2007 report). Most of the glaciers are retreating and it is quite clear that global warming is one of the major factors. Hundreds of small glaciers are disappearing quite rapidly and they are already affecting small communities in rural valleys. They don’t get much media coverage because they are isolated, but their water sources are dissipating all the same. The real challenge is the biggest glaciers, which are so large that the impact of global warming isn’t seen immediately. Those glaciers are currently responding to whatever forcing they received 30-40 years ago.

Earthzine: What else must be done to tighten the link between science and policy on black carbon?

Srinivasan: One thing is comprehensive data on black carbon’s origins and distribution, which exhibits large temporal and spatial variation. India’s Department of Space has organized some remote measurement and there has been a limited road campaign to observe the spatial variation in aerosols and black carbon around major cities with ground-based equipment. But we need to simultaneously make measurements in all seasons and in all regions to really understand the impacts.

An aerosol haze often hangs over the Ganges River delta. Source: NASA.

Srinivasan: It will, for example, help determine the relative importance of diesel exhaust, burning of firewood, and power plants as black carbon sources in India. Initially, people thought the main source was diesel exhaust. Now they think firewood. As of today it’s only guesswork, and the government needs to know because the source has big implications for policy. If diesel smoke is a major source then black carbon will be fairly easy to control, analogous to lead in gasoline. If the major source is firewood, that will be much more difficult to control. To change that would require a very unusual and major campaign.

Earthzine: You have criticized calls for immediate regulation of soot as a climate actor. Are you saying that black carbon emissions are not an important target for pollution reduction?

Srinivasan: No. We know that soot is very bad for health. That’s the real reason why soot has to be reduced, both in India and elsewhere. The data is very strong. For example, a recent Canadian study that followed 20,000 women and impact of aerosols on their health found a dramatic correlation between soot exposure and the risk of heart attacks. It’s remarkable data, especially for India where aerosol exposures are considerably higher than those experienced in Canada. India has one of the highest heart attack rates in the world in a society where the meat consumption is the lowest in the world.

Unfortunately, the Indian people don’t seem to understand how bad air pollution is for health. There are still many who think that air pollution is a necessary price for progress. It’s the same thing people were saying when I was a student in the U.S. 40 years ago. The good news is that attitudes changed there, and they are changing in India. New Delhi was a pretty polluted place and because of a major campaign by the Centre for Science and Environment, an environmental NGO, the emissions were brought down. Politicians ignored their campaign and so they went to court. The court ordered emissions reductions and it was done. It’s an amazing story.

Earthzine: So why not use the climate talks as a forum for attacking those emissions? Soot lasts only days or weeks in the atmosphere and therefore emissions reductions could have immediate impact.

Srinivasan: Because it’s a diverting tactic that will tend to take the pressure off controlling CO₂ emissions. That’s a serious issue. If we are going to control global warming, we need to start taking proven measures right now against those proven bad actors.

Kenji Williams performing the Bella Gaia show. Photo Source: Meaningful Media

The project is based on a similar venture called Bella Gaia — a theatrical experience simulating an astronaut’s look at Earth from space, with a live musical performance by violinist and composer Kenji Williams.

Looking at our planet from a spacecraft can create an “overview effect” — what astronauts describe as an elevated sense of euphoria. Casasanto and her team have built on this idea by partnering with NASA, the University of Maryland, Remedy Arts, and five museums.

She says she’s excited that her project will be largely distributed, because she believes it will create a greater awareness and appreciation for Earth systems, and help inspire students. The competitive grant comes from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“This program is powerful in that it combines music, science, Earth and space imagery, and cultural perspectives all at the same time, making it a very valuable tool for education,” Casasanto said.

Casasanto and Williams answer student questions during a special broadcast to NASA's Digital Learning Network in celebration of Earth Day, 2010. Photo Source: NASA GSFC

The timeline for Casasanto’s Beautiful Earth project will coincide with NASA mission timelines. For example, the successful June 10 launch of the Aquarius mission will bring back data on ocean salinity levels which can then be presented during the show. Casasanto also plans to use the final shuttle mission in her presentation, as well as information gathered by older satellites such as Terra and Aqua. This data will be explained by experts including Dr. Thorsten Markus (head, Cryospheric Sciences Branch), Dr. Nancy Maynard (senior research scientist, Cryospheric Sciences Branch), and Dr. Robert Cahalan (Head, Climate and Radiation Branch).

The Beautiful Earth program will work through numerous engagement portals: Museums and planetariums, live shows, hands-on workshops, the DLN, Channel One Television, on-line workshops and websites, and the Bella Gaia Live Fulldome master, which involves showing the presentation in a massive, dome-shaped sphere that captures the audience using multiple projectors.

Horace Mitchell of NASA’s GSFC shows off images from the Scientific Visualization Studio. Photo Credit: Wanda Archy

Casasanto says, “It is important to consider all aspects of the Earth, because it is a complex system, and indigenous people, in particular Native Americans, have lived in harmony with the Earth for thousands of years. This whole module will be powerful because it will introduce indigenous students to NASA Earth Sciences and STEM careers at NASA, but at the same time it will teach non-native students about the indigenous perspective.”

The images and videos shown in this multimedia production are gathered from the Scientific Visualization Studio that “facilitates scientific inquiry and outreach within NASA programs through visualization.” Currently, there are about 3,900 of these within the database. Williams also uses a special program called Uniview, which allows him to integrate the flyovers and orbital projections into the show.

Who is Max Craglia? Massimo (Max) Craglia is a senior scientist in the Unit of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission that has the responsibility for the technical development of the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe. Within the Unit, he is responsible for the development of the INSPIRE Implementing Rules for Metadata, and for research on the impact assessment of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs) and INSPIRE. He also is the technical coordinator of EuroGEOSS project, an Integrated Project developing INSPIRE-compliant GEOSS Operating Capacity in three thematic areas: Drought, Biodiversity/Protected Areas, and Forestry. In addition, Max is one of the founders of the Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information Science and the editor of the International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructures Research. Prior to joining the JRC in 2005, Max was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, teaching GIS for urban planners, and researching areas of spatial data infrastructure deployment, use, and data policy. Max holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy; a MPhil in Urban & Regional Planning from the University of Edinburgh; and a PhD in GIS and Planning from the University of Sheffield. His books include “GIS and Evidence-Based Policy Making,” with Steve Wise, “GIS in Public Health Practice” with Ravi Maheswaran, “Geographic Information Research: Transatlantic Perspectives” with H. Onsrud and “Geographic Information Research: Bridging The Atlantic” with H. Couclelis.

The first step in making sense of the processes and events that impact the Earth is to observe and analyze them. The next step is to share those observations and analyses with your peers in the context of a shared infrastructure. Today, however, there are dozens of such shared infrastructures, each with its own set of policies, terms and protocols. The content is written in dozens of languages, and may cover the same ground multiple times. As Dr. Massimo (Max) Craglia, technical coordinator of the EuroGEOSS project, explains:

“Over the last 15 years, there have been a lot of developments worldwide to develop infrastructures to share spatial and environmental data. These have been mainly government led, and focused on research and policy. The problem we faced in Europe was that these different infrastructures did not use the same technical protocols, and therefore could not communicate across borders. Moreover, their content was in different languages (23 in the European Union alone), and major semantic differences existed across disciplines.”

One answer to this complex situation is the creation of The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe (INSPIRE). INSPIRE is a European directive, adopted in 2007, and in the process of being implemented. The INSPIRE legislation obliges all nations in the European Union to “ensure that the spatial data infrastructures of the Member States are compatible and usable in a community and transboundary context.”

INSPIRE provides a series of technical guidelines and specifications to ensure that all European spatial data infrastructures work together. The Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) is the Technical Coordinator of this activity, but other directorates also are involved.  The European Directorate-General for the Environment is leading the policy aspects, since INSPIRE addresses mainly environmental issues, while Eurostat will run the operational components. According to the INSPIRE website, the key principles of INSPIRE are that:

• Data should be collected only once and kept where it can be maintained most effectively;
• It should be possible to combine seamless spatial information from different sources across Europe and share it with many users and applications;
• It should be possible for information collected at one level/scale to be shared with all levels/scales; detailed for thorough investigations, general for strategic purposes;
• Geographic information needed for good governance at all levels should be readily and transparently available;
• It should be easy to find what geographic information is available, how it can be used to meet a particular need, and under which conditions it can be acquired and used.

INSPIRE is an important European contribution to the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. Other contributions from Europe include the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative, and dedicated research projects. This is where EuroGEOSS comes in.

EuroGEOSS, funded by the European Union Framework Programme for Research & Development, is a three-year project intended to advance the state of the art of infrastructures like INSPIRE.

Illustration of Brokering Framework. Source: EuroGEOSS

Says Dr. Craglia: “EuroGEOSS involves access to data, but it also says ‘yes, data is important – but more important is what you do with the data afterwards.’ If you are trying to address complex issues like climate change or impact of society on the environment and vice versa, you must analyze, build models, make forecasts.

“In this project, we are trying to move beyond access to data, and make sure specialists describe what they do with the data to address different questions. All the knowledge experts have in their heads through their training is brought out into the open, formalized, and published so that the models that people would ordinarily create in their offices are also available to the wider scientific community. We are trying to create an environment in which scientists in different specialties can collaborate with a shared perspective to address different chunks of a problem.”

Craglia notes that collaboration is difficult, especially when it crosses both disciplines and language barriers. Thus, the challenge of EuroGEOSS is to develop tools to bridge traditional chasms between and among scientific communities.
The EC and JRC already have information systems that relate to drought, forestry and biodiversity, and so those three themes were selected as a focus for EuroGEOSS in its first three years.

Specifically, for example, “Biodiversity” addresses national parks in Africa because the EU is a major donor of aid in Africa, so there’s a policy demand to develop priorities for where to put the money.

Drought and Forest have a more European focus but they also are contributing to global initiatives. By focusing on specific areas of interest, EuroGEOSS can create a template that includes linkages across multiple systems so they can work together as one; not only accessing data but also providing models, forecasts, and possible scenarios. Once the templates are complete, it will become possible to expand the model to other thematic areas.

How is it possible to share information across disciplines, languages and infrastructure? The answer, now actively in use through EuroGEOSS, is a “brokering framework.” According to the EuroGEOSS website, “The EuroGEOSS Broker is able to interface with the web services in each of the three thematic areas, regardless of the different standards they use. In practical terms, the broker takes a request from a user as an entry, translates and dispatches it between the referenced services. In return, it merges and displays the results from the services.”

Says Dr. Craglia, “To develop the broker, you need to go out into different scientific communities and find out what is important to them, and how they address a problem. To do that, you need to sit, for example, with someone responsible for creating a map of forested areas in Europe and ask, “how do you do it?”

The likely response will be, Craglia says, “I create a map of an area that’s forested.” But then the question must be asked, “What do you mean by forest?” Unfortunately, the answer to that question is as varied as the people involved.

For example, “A forest can have no trees at all in England, as the term was used for the hunting reserves of kings. So there are English ’forests‘ with no trees. You can find definitions of forest that run for hundreds of pages. In some of the work we do, we adopt for example the definition of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), because you can’t cater for all definitions of forest — but you must make explicit which one you’re adopting for a particular application, what you do to reach an answer to a particular question. The key is that you are comparing apples to apples.”

Next, “You go through the process that each specialist goes through; you describe the process in language or in a more formal way. There are formal languages (such as the Business Processes Modeling Notation or BPMN) that allow- formal description of the process. Then you refine the process further into the work flow. Eventually, you can make the workflow executable by computers and thus create a service that’s published on the web.”

The EuroGEOSS Broker is a breakthrough in multi-disciplinary, international collaboration. It’s also, says Craglia, a “huge paradigm shift. If you’re a specialist you do all your work on the computer on your own; if you make the process more open and explicit, and run it on the web, potentially millions of people can use it and understand the science better.” The program is already available on the web, and is in use by investigators in specific fields of environmental research.

While the process of developing the Broker is time-consuming and complex, says Craglia, it’s working. “One proof of the pudding is that we are halfway through the project and the work we’ve developed has been recognized as so useful that we’re asked to contribute to a demonstration for the next GEOSS plenary.

“The architecture we’ve put in place is essentially based on acknowledging the differences in different disciplines. Through the work we’ve done we’ve realized that disciplines have different professional languages, styles, standards, and ways of collecting and sharing information. There are good reasons for the differences, so if you want to bring them together you can’t force them into a single template. You can’t be a dictator. People will say ‘no thanks.’ Instead, you build bridges. You learn to listen and understand what people do. You build technology that provides connections among different standards and information systems so they can communicate.”

According to the EuroGEOSS site, “The development for interoperability in EuroGEOSS has three phases: Interoperability within domains – across regional and national data bases; interoperability between the three focus domains of the project; and broad interoperability across the nine societal benefit areas of GEOSS. The EuroGEOSS project ends in April 2012, but another project will continue its work addressing the areas of Weather, Oceans, and Water (GEOWOW).

Alberto Moreira, IEEE-GRSS President

By Paul E. Racette, DSc

Dr. Alberto Moreira, president of the IEEE Geosciences and Remote Sensing Society, has a dynamic vision for remote sensing that is now, he says, in its golden age. And he sees that the rewards of maturity also bring responsibility. “This is a living Earth. We have a responsibility to leave the Earth at least in as good of condition as it is today.”

Dr. Moreira is a pioneer in research and development of high-resolution radar signal processing, innovative synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system concepts and associated techniques like radar tomography, digital beam forming and advanced imaging modes. He received the B.S.E.E. and the M.S.E.E. degrees, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, from the Aeronautical Technological Institute ITA, Brazil and the Eng. Dr. degree (Honors) from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, 1993. In 2003, he received a full professorship from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in the field of Microwave Remote Sensing. As its chief scientist and engineer, Prof. Moreira managed from 1996 to 2001 the SAR Technology Department of the Microwaves and Radar Institute at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Since 2001, he is the director of the Microwaves and Radar Institute at DLR. The Institute contributes to several scientific programs and space projects for actual and future air- and space-borne SAR missions. Prof. Moreira is the Principal Investigator for the TanDEM-X mission led by DLR.

His personal interests are dynamic, too. He is South American from Sao Jose dos Campos in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He went to Germany for his PhD and met his wife, also a Brazilian, in an art museum, an interest they share. His father is an architect, plays the violin and paints and his mother is a professional musician, from whom he learned to play the piano. He and his wife have two children, 12 and 14. His hobby, begun when he was 17, is gliding a tow airplane without a motor in which he has participated in world championships. “It’s incredible the flight of gliders, a very nice experience. And this perhaps inspired me to work with space research. When you fly you are like a bird and can see the ground below, just like remote sensing.”

Paul Racette, Earthzine Editor in Chief, interviewed Alberto Moreira at the 2010 IGARSS in Honolulu.

Earthzine: How did you enter the field of remote sensing?

Alberto Moreira: My professor in Brazil told me if I wanted to make good research in my field I should go to either the United States, Europe, or somewhere else. I got a scholarship from the German government and with that I came to DLR, the German Aerospace Center, in ’86, to earn a PhD in synthetic aperture radar. And this was a very challenging time for SAR because at that time, a few people had a deep understanding onhow it works. Even the digital processing algorithms that could deliver a very focused image were not well understood. And my task at DLR was to develop a real-time algorithm for our airborne SAR. At that time we had workstations that were very slow. It took two days to process one SAR image, with some ten by ten kilometers. They had a request to have these in real-time. That was the topic of my PhD to develop an algorithm for real-time airborne SAR processing. At the end of my PhD, this was implemented in the airborne SAR. We had twenty-eight digital signal processors, dedicated computational units. We could have SAR images in real-time with three meters resolution, and these were used for more than ten years during innumerous airborne campaigns.

Earthzine: You’re now the director of the Microwaves and Radar Institute.

Alberto Moreira: This does not happen very often at DLR. I made a sort of career at DLR at the start as a PhD student. I was contracted as a researcher and then, after three years, I was a group leader responsible for ten people. In ’96, I got the responsibility of a full department with some 35 people. Then in 2001, I was very proud to be selected as the director of the microwaves and radar institute. We are some 130 people. Our institute is shaping the future radar missions of the German space program. All the new radar missions in Germany are coming from our institute.

Alberto Moreira and IEEE President John Vig present Prof. Ya-Qiu Jin the 2010 IEEE GRS-S Education Award

Earthzine: Does that include the ESA, the ERS-1?

Alberto Moreira: We have made substantial contributions in the conceptual analysis, the performance estimation and calibration for all the ESA radar missions. For the Sentinel-1 we have a contract from industry for defining the calibration algorithms of the mission. We have also had international programs with NASA. Since the eighties we have been collaborating with JPL in the scope of the Shuttle Imaging Radar missions SIR-C/X-SAR, and also SRTM. DLR has contributed with the X-band radar systems for these missions. SIR-C/X-SAR in ’94 was a milestone in radar development because this was the first mission with three radars at three different frequencies. In 2000, with the SRTM [Shuttle Radar Topography Mission] we had one radar from JPL, a C-band radar, and the X-band radar from Germany, both for topographic mapping. That mission was also again a milestone in remote sensing because the topographic data from interferometric SAR measurements became a reference for the geocoding of remote sensing data for geoscience applications.

Earthzine: The TerraSAR-X is Germany’s first radar satellite.

Alberto Moreira: That’s a mission in a public-private partnership between DLR and the German industry. TerraSAR-X was launched in June 2007. Since then it is supplying high-resolution radar images for scientific and commercial applications. TerraSAR-X is the fruit of consistent development of German radar technology over many years and is an example of successful cooperation with the German space industry. Our institute is responsible for the system engineering, radar instrument operation and calibration and is involved in a number of scientific proposals for data evaluation.

Earthzine: How many free flying SARs have been launched?

Alberto Moreira: We have a tremendous development in the radar area. Ten years ago, we had two satellites: RadarSat-1 was one and the ERS-2. These were single frequency, no polarization and so on. As of today we have fifteen spaceborne radars flying with different frequencies and polarizations and this has been a huge development. The great number of SARs in space is a prominent example of the golden age of remote sensing.

TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X formation flying to collect interferometric SAR imagery

Earthzine: Fifteen SARs?

Alberto Moreira: All SARs! In addition to ERS-2 and Radarsat-1, that are still operating, we have three CosmoSkymed satellites, we have the ENVISAT/ASAR satellite, we have ALOS/PALSAR, we have the TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, TECSAR from Israel, five SAR-Lupe satellites, and Radarsat-2. So we have now indeed sixteen and a new era for SAR remote sensing!

Earthzine: So you are the Principal Investigator on the TanDEM-X.

Alberto Moreira: In 2001 we started with the realization of TerraSAR-X satellite in Germany. And then in 2003, the national call for the next Earth Observation mission after TerraSAR-X was issued in Germany. I had the vision at that time: our institute should submit a strong proposal for a first interferometric SAR mission with close formation flying because of the huge demand for digital elevation models with improved quality. In 2006, we were very happy that the German space agency selected our mission proposal, TanDEM-X, for implementation. That was a challenge: A lot of changes could not be done as we would like because TerraSAR-X was almost built and scheduled to be launched in 2007. We started indeed in 2004-05 doing the kind of minimal changes in TerraSAR-X in order to allow for a bistatic radar operation. TerraSAR-X was launched in 2007 and TanDEM-X now in June 2010.

Earthzine: So it just launched recently.

Alberto Moreira: Very recently, but our team is so strong: three days after the launch, we produced our first radar image! This is a world record, normally it takes a few weeks or even months to have the first image. And just last week, 25 days after the launch of TanDEM-X we were able to produce our first DEM [digital elevation map] with a height accuracy of about 30 cm. Still, with a big separation between the satellites, as they are flying three seconds behind the other, this is more or less 20 kilometers. They are approaching very slowly and in the middle of October they will be just about 250 meters from each other!

Earthzine: What are the objectives of the TanDEM-X mission?

Alberto Moreira: The primary objective is to produce a new global digital elevation model with accuracy much better than what is currently available. Today what we have globally is about ten meters height accuracy. From SRTM we don’t have the icecaps, we only have DEM data within ±60 degree latitude because the shuttle could not cross the poles. With TanDEM-X we will have global coverage of consistent quality with horizontal spacing of about 12 meters and a height accuracy of 2 meters. For local areas, we can achieve accuracy that is even better than one meter in the height. For example, last week our first DEM had an accuracy of about 30 centimeters. Because the separation is so big, the interferometer becomes very sensitive. But we cannot map the whole Earth, for example the Himalayas, the Alps, or Rocky Mountains with accuracy of ten centimeters. That’s too sensitive: you lose control of the topography. In the first year, we’ll map the Earth with accuracy of about four meters. Then we’ll map it again the next year with much higher accuracy. The two products will deliver a high quality DEM with accuracy of about two meters.

Earthzine: Now, GEOSS is built around the nine societal benefit areas. What are the societal benefits of TanDEM-X?

Alberto Moreira: Basically, the global DEM, is the first goal of TanDEM-X. With this product we make contributions to the following 5 GEOSS benefit areas. One example is hydrology. Water flows according to the ground slope. If we use the present-day DEM’s ten meters accuracy to simulate waterflow, then you can see how inaccurate water modeling can be. Other benefit areas are disaster (e.g. high resolution 3D maps of affected areas), climate (topographic maps of the polar caps providing high-resolution information about the ice melting), agriculture (biomass estimation of crop fields by using the innovative technique of polarimetric SAR interferometry) and ecosystems (monitoring of forest areas, aforestation and deforestation). We are also planning to produce global maps on land use change since we are going to map the whole land masses twice.

Earthzine: How are you incorporating the TanDEM-X data sets with GEOSS?

Alberto Moreira: We are working in one of the GEOSS working groups that is also working with the SRTM DEM and with the ASTER DEM. The TanDEM-X mission was only possible because of a public-private partnership with the industry. Our industry partners paid 30% of the cost of the mission, and DLR the rest. We cannot open the whole DEM to the scientific community on a global basis because otherwise you don’t have a commercial market for the industry. We plan to make available to GEOSS a DEM with reduced pixel resolution but with height accuracy much better than currently available. This is how we have established industry partnerships so that we can do business as well as research and contribute to GEOSS.

Alberto Moreira flies a German glider (ASW20, 15 m span) over the atlantic mountains in Brazil

Alberto Moreira: Well we need to separate the technical challenges into categories such as lidars, imaging optical sensors, radars, and also microwave radiometers. In all these measurement areas we need to move in the direction of data continuity. Whether we are mapping long-term processes or short term, the measurements will only become reliable if there are data available over long periods. Radars, for example, digital beam forming represents the future technology, allowing a much better performance, swath width and resolution than existing systems. Microwave radiometers are moving towards the concept of synthetic aperture. The optical, high resolution, and several hyperspectral sensors are just coming out with an incredible number of bands.

One most important part is that these technologies must become affordable – remote sensing must be affordable. The cost of the satellites must become cheaper. We have good examples from Europe over the last few years where the industry makes offers much below the cost cap set by the funding agency. This is a revolution and I hope that in this way we can afford these new technological developments. We need solutions where the next generation of technology has a heritage from the past. We need a road map for 20 years ahead, so we can plan the heritage from one technology to another without big jumps that are usually associated with high risks and costs. Then technology development becomes affordable.

Earthzine: ESA just recently hosted the Living Planet Symposium. Do you view the Earth as a living entity?

Alberto Moreira: The Earth is dynamic. Every minute, every second something is changing on the Earth. Human beings make the Earth much more dynamic. This is a challenge because Earth’s processes are rather complicated and they interact with each other in ways we do not understand. One big challenge is to guarantee that we have sustainable development. The Earth is so fragile that if we don’t care, future generations will have less chance for a better life than we have. And this we cannot afford. Sustainable development is an agreement between countries, every nation has a responsibility to make sure that they are taking care of the water resources. Every individual has this responsibility. This is a living Earth. We have a responsibility to leave the Earth in at least as good of condition as it is today.

Alberto Moreira
IEEE-GRSS President,
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Microwaves and Radar Institute
P.O. Box 1116
82230 Wessling/Oberpfaffenhofen
GERMANY
Phone: + 49 8153 28 2305/2306 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              + 49 8153 28 2305/2306      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Fax: + 49 8153 28 1135
Email: alberto.moreira@dlr.de

Mr. Arjun Thapan, Special Senior Advisor to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) President for Infrastructure and Water

Introduction

Mr. Arjun Thapan was appointed Special Senior Advisor for Infrastructure and Water to Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda in January 2010 with the task of strengthening the communities of practice in Water, Energy, Transport, and Urban Development, and ensuring that ADB develops effective partnerships and knowledge platforms to deliver high quality policy and technical advice to its clients. He also guides the design and development of the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund. Mr. Thapan was previously the Director General of ADB’s Southeast Asia Department since 15 December 2006 after having been the department’s Deputy Director General from December 2004. He guided and oversaw ADB’s strategic agenda and development programs in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam, as well as the Greater Mekong Sub-region. A new relationship with Brunei Darussalam was forged during his tenure, and an important re-engagement with Malaysia developed. He was also responsible for the execution of the BIMP-EAGA and IMT-GT sub-regional initiatives of the department; both saw substantive growth in the range and scale of activities, including the first ever development of sub-regional projects. Mr. Thapan is a leading thinker on Water issues in Asia and a strong advocate of ADB’s water agenda. He served as Chair of ADB’s Water Committee until August 2008, and continues to guide the larger water community of practice at ADB. Mr. Thapan has led the initiative to double ADB’s investments in water and sanitation to over $2 billion annually. He is co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security. His work on water policy issues, especially on “Water for ALL” for Asia’s developing countries, has been universally recognized; he is currently guiding the design of a water resources operational framework to sit within a Green Growth paradigm in ADB. Mr. Thapan is an Indian national with 34 years of professional experience. He joined ADB in 1991 as a Financial Analyst in the Infrastructure Department.

Mr. Arjun Thapan
Special Senior Advisor to the ADB President for Infrastructure and Water

Among Asia’s better-known records during the decade to 2010 is the dramatic reduction in poverty across the region. Regional income per capita has roughly doubled in the last 10 years. But despite these gains, security in food, water, health care, and livelihoods continues to plague many hundreds of millions within the Asia and Pacific region. While this is a daunting challenge in itself, it is compounded by the fact that Asia’s growth has come, in some significant part, at the expense of the physical environment – deforestation, land degradation, and the pollution of our water and air resources.

But this is not all. Climate change is our newest challenge. Asia is already experiencing the impact of climate variability, and its countries are now at risk through a combination of geography, patterns of settlement, and resource endowments. As all of us know, climate change is about water – Asia’s inhabitants will experience alterations in the hydrologic cycle, most likely including an increasing frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified water, along with agriculture, as the sector “most sensitive to climate change-induced impacts in Asia.” Climate-related risks will exacerbate existing water stresses on the continent, which have resulted from rapid economic development, demographic changes and associated increases in water demand.

Many large Asian river basins are particularly vulnerable to regional warming, since Himalayan glaciers and snowfields serve as the region’s “water towers” supporting dry season and drought-year flows upon which roughly a billion Asians depend. And, in low-elevation coastal zones where many of Asia’s largest cities are located, sea level rise will further degrade coastal aquifers through saline intrusion, and threaten urban water supplies. This is already happening, for instance, in the Mekong delta where saline intrusion has progressed 80 kilometers inland and impacted on agricultural productivity and livelihoods. In a sense, the future is already with us. Overall, we believe that up to 1 billion Asians are potentially vulnerable to increased water stress by 2050 as a result of climate change.

From a recently published study on the world’s water resources in 2030 for 154 basins around the world, water requirements in 2030 will grow from 4,500 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 6,900 bcm, an increase of 40 percent. About a third of the world’s population, concentrated mainly in the developing world, will live in basins where the deficit will exceed 50 percent. In India and China, for instance, the aggregate gap is estimated to be 50 and 25 percent respectively. With economic growth and social equity so crucially dependent upon water, policy makers in Asia have some quick decisions to take if the crisis is not to overwhelm us.

It is uncertainty – rather than change – that currently represents the greatest challenge to decision makers in adapting to climate change in the water sector — do we act now on the basis of what we presently believe will occur, and risk the misallocation of scarce resources, or do we wait until the quality of our projections improves, and risk having waited too long?

Clients of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) consistently request improved mid-to-long term climate and water resources projections, methods and tools for climate change impact and vulnerability assessment, and resources for adaptation planning. This is sought in the context of water resources and disaster management. But while ADB is well positioned to facilitate the delivery of such tools and services, the development of scientific products, including the synthesis and interpretation of Earth observations, will come from partnerships such as an alignment of GEOSS and ADB around common objectives. These objectives include an improvement in the physical and social well-being of the region’s inhabitants, a reduction in the risks posed by climate variability and change, and protection of the region’s ecological health and biodiversity in the face of development pressures. A good example is the Integrated Citarum Water Resources Management Investment Program – a 15-year, $3.5 billion program in a strategically important basin in West Java, Indonesia. Climate-related risks include an increased flood hazard in the upper catchments, loss of hydropower capacity, reductions in water deliveries for irrigated agriculture and urban water supply (Jakarta), and threats to coastal aquifers from sea level rise. The GEOSS Asian Water Cycle Initiative (AWCI) is designed to address these challenges, through the sharing of “timely, quality, long-term information on water quantity and quality and their variation as a basis for sound decision-making of national water policies and management strategies.” In addition, both ADB and GEOSS/AWCI recognize the effectiveness of the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach to basin water resources management, and are supporting its implementation throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Let me emphasize that water, along with agriculture, has been identified as the sectors most sensitive to climate change-induced impacts in Asia. We must establish a sustainable pattern of development. Our experience and evidence show that a sustainable pattern of development needs to be disaster and climate resilient. Support for climate change adaptation can be supported through country-led developments in partnership with international organizations such as ADB and GEOSS to step up policy research, increase our knowledge, and build greater capacity. This collaboration will help us all become better prepared to understand and deal with climate change as it unfolds unpredictably in multiple ways.

Tomorrow’s Asia will be very different from the continent as we currently know it. Science and technology will help in identifying the factors most likely to impact sustainable development. Innovation will help in designing the solutions. GEOSS is very much a part of that effort and we commend the process of strengthening the Earth observation network.

Dr. Thomas Freud Wiener, IEEE Committee on Earth Observations chairman

Dr. Thomas Freud Wiener is an aerospace engineer with over 40 years of increasing responsibility in conducting and directing high technology research and development efforts. Now the principal of the Forté Consultancy, he was formerly a program manager of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, serving there for a total of ten years. He served in the U.S. Navy for over 22 years, qualified in Destroyers and in Submarines. He commanded the nuclear attack submarine USS JACK. His special technical proficiencies span the fields of missile technology, inertial guidance and automatic control, imaging and non-imaging sensors, and C³I. He has acquired substantial expertise in training and education in the Navy and in civilian life.

He understands the orderly deployment of responsibilities that keeps complex engineered systems moving forward. And with years of strategic management experience at DARPA in his professional CV, he also understands how to shape complex human organizations with a light touch so they function efficiently and harmoniously to achieve greater goals. As an IEEE Senior Life Member, he brings this experience to work in his leadership of the IEEE Committee on Earth Observations (ICEO), having begun a two-year term as chair in January 2010.

In his interview, he explains how IEEE became a Participating Organization in the Group on Earth Organization, and expands on what that now means for the world’s largest professional organization.

Earthzine: Tell us how and why the ICEO came to represent IEEE in the Group on Earth Observations?

Dr. Wiener: IEEE’s involvement with the Group on Earth Observations began following the first ad hoc meeting of the group on Earth observations in Washington, DC in July of 2003. Dr. Jay Pearlman, then an employee of the Boeing Co., realized the impact of a global framework to improve societal planning and decisions based on a better understanding of our environment. A discussion with GEO leadership showed that there was interest in participation by professional organizations such as the IEEE. He consulted with Charles Luther, then president of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, and Paul Gartz, then president of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society about how to involve IEEE in this exciting new opportunity.

After discussions with Dr. Albin Gasiewski, president elect of GRS-S, he convened a meeting that included me as president of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society. As a result of that meeting, I proposed to the IEEE Technical Activities Board that a small group of us investigate whether IEEE involvement in GEO activities was appropriate and if so, how to take advantage of the opportunities presented. And thus the ad hoc IEEE Committee on Earth Observation was born.

At the next Earth observation Summit in Tokyo in 2004, Dr. Gasiewski represented the IEEE. Because the primary purpose of GEO is to support policymakers in their decisions, he was asked, “What’s an engineer like you doing in a policy meeting?” His classic response, “We thought that someday you might like to build this,” provides the basis for IEEE involvement.

During 2004 and 2005 the vision for GEO and its intent to develop the Global Earth Observation System of Systems became clearer. IEEE continued its ad hoc participation, making valuable contributions to GEO and to the drafts of the 10-year development plan for GEOSS.

This group photo of participants at an ISRO/IEEE/ISPRS/OGC workshop in India on health illustrates just one of 30 workshops IEEE coordinated worldwide to support GEOSS.

The 2005 GEO Ministerial Summit occurred in Brussels. The IEEE delegation was led by Dr. Michael Lightner, then the IEEE President-Elect and by Dr. Jay Pearlman, then chair of the IEEE Committee on Earth Observation. At that meeting the participants established the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to take those steps necessary to implement GEOSS and endorsed the 10-Year Implementation Plan for establishing a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The IEEE became one of the original Participating Organizations in GEO.

Earthzine: What is ICEO’s function as a Participating Organization?

Dr.Wiener: First let me say that the Participating Organization is IEEE. ICEO is merely the organizational unit within the IEEE that is the interface with GEO.

GEO is a voluntary association composed of the 82 Member States, the European Commission, and the 58 Participating Organizations. Each one of these contributes to GEO and to the development of GEOSS as its expertise and resources permit. The IEEE’s primary resource is the expertise of its volunteers. The span of this expertise is extraordinarily broad, beginning with electrical engineering and computer science and extending to physics, chemistry, and medicine, to name a few.

The IEEE is involved in two sorts of activities. The first is participation in and leading GEOSS development tasks. Many of the IEEE tasks involve the development of the GEOSS Information System (Common Interface). This involves accessing data and metadata from many disparate data sources and finding ways to make them interoperable. Interoperability and access to information is a GEO priority.

The IEEE is also engaged in GEO committee work. The development of GEOSS is guided by four committees that cut across the nine Societal Benefit Areas. These are the Architecture and Data Committee, the User Interface Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, and the Capacity Building Committee. IEEE is Co-chair of the first two committees.

Earthzine: Can you give us some examples of current ICEO activities?

Dr. Wiener: Let me begin with Earthzine (www.earthzine.org) where you are reading this. It is a webzine produced for GEO by IEEE as a service to society! Early on, we knew that GEO’s success would be critically dependent on communicating its mission, vision and benefits to the broad constituencies within its membership as well to those potential constituencies in unaffiliated countries and organizations. Dr. Paul Racette, an IEEE member, took the lead on that task in 2007 and has built Earthzine from nothing to an online publication on a very crowded Internet that is already read by an average of 4,500 individuals monthly in over 130 countries. Paul and his editorial staff are using this medium to inform the world about societal issues and to encourage thoughtful discussion and effective action by individuals, organizations, and nations.

As part of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure task, the IEEE has established the Standards and Interoperability Forum as a process to facilitate the common ground that will allow data sets to be interoperable with others. To support those engaged in observations and in developing data bases, a Best Practices Wiki as a resource for providers of data has been established by the IEEE. We are also leading tasks dealing with ocean observations and health reporting systems.

In support of GEOSS development, IEEE conducts user oriented workshops for GEOSS Outreach and Feedback. These workshops, frequently held in conjunction with major IEEE conferences, demonstrate the GEOSS Common Infrastructure to users in all societal benefit areas. These global and regional workshops provide avenues for user inputs into the GEOSS requirements and feedback on the operational aspects of GEOSS.

In addition, these workshops expose regional and local stakeholders to best practices in capacity building and to the benefits of the GEONETCast data dissemination system – in combination with open source web-based applications and service deliveries, for the various societal benefit areas, and GEOSS observation networks. To date IEEE has conducted over thirty workshops.

An exciting feature of the IEEE activities in GEO is the broad participation of the various parts of the Institute. Several Societies are taking leadership roles in some GEOSS Development Tasks. The Communications Society is pursuing several avenues toward the realization of the ubiquitous Internet, including working with South Africa to develop a rural communications network. The Oceanic Engineering Society has taken the role as the IEEE Co-Lead of the Ocean Observing Task. The Computer Society is working with us as we develop a computer game (Save Earth) for young people that will let them explore the effects of various activities on the Earth System as shown by Earth Observations. The South Africa Section is taking an active part in the IEEE’s Advisor to Nations activities there. We receive support from the France Section in our European Commission activities. The Educational Activities Board is participating in the development of the Space Technology Master’s Degree Program development in South Africa.

IEEE is pursuing a project called Water for the World. We have produced an “Actionable Vision” that reviews the availability of fresh water and suggests easily achievable steps that will improve that availability. We are now initiating pilot projects that will be persistent, sustainable, repeatable, scalable, reusable, and fundable.

Earthzine: Could you use more Water for the World volunteers?

Dr. Wiener: You bet! There are opportunities to do good for the world using whatever skills and knowledge individual volunteers are able to offer. We can use people with narrow technical specialties; we can use program managers who take a broader view of problems and projects; we can use people whose offering is only an hour or two a week on a very focused task.

Earthzine: Are there volunteer projects that are ideal for desk jockeys?

Dr. Wiener: Yes, indeed! We have need for planners, web jockeys, writers, financial managers, educators, and analysts. If you have an itch to make the world a better place, we can find a fulfilling opportunity for you.

Earthzine: What challenges do these initiatives face?

Dr. Wiener: The primary challenge for all our initiatives is finding the resources to make them happen. First, we need dedicated volunteers who take ownership of the various tasks. This involves defining them, coordinating activities with colleagues, collaborators, and beneficiaries around the world, and gathering others to participate in the challenge. It also involves finding the money needed. The more people and the more money we can find, the more good work IEEE can do for the world.

Earthzine: What is the ICEO vision going forward?

Water for the World--Villagers from Melva, India have participated in planning and building the required cisterns and in preparing the surfaces for harvesting rainwater.

The Eiffel Tower, an icon of human achievement, is obscured by a thick fog.

Climate skepticism is attracting greater attention by news and social media networks. A disturbing undercurrent entails the perception that climate change is an invention forged by climate scientists. Such distortion is another example of the “conspiracy theories” of recent years, “theories” that argued: Darwin’s theory of evolution is satanic; concentration camps and gas chambers did not exist; Neil Armstrong never walked on the Moon; the World Trade Center was not destroyed by terrorists; etc… Now a few climate change contrarians are refuting the work of thousands of technicians, engineers, and researchers around the world who are dedicated to understanding what is indeed a very complex system. Understanding climate requires the combined efforts of experts in diverse scientific disciplines because understanding climate involves physical, chemical, biological, and socioeconomic interactions and feedbacks. Contrarians contribute to the confusion in the general population by shedding doubt on the validity of numerical model projections, whereas, there already exists a preponderance of empirical evidence that the rapid growth of human population over the past century has resulted in deleterious environmental change with significant societal impact. Indeed, there is no Climate Skeptic Observing System. Scientific instruments provide evidence of the global temperature increase near the surface and decrease in the stratosphere, of changes in atmospheric composition, of sea level rise, sea ice and glaciers melting, deforestation, etc.

The knowledge a person possesses is a very strong determinant of what information is perceived and the value of its importance. Could climate skepticism simply result from unsophisticated epistemological beliefs preventing acceptance of evidence that conflicts with a flawed mental model of how the climate works more than from a conspiratorial attitude? Learning often involves modifications in core knowledge and beliefs, which at times can be strongly resisted and an obstacle to conceptual change. Providing solid and comprehensive education based on sound Earth observations is an important step forward to alleviating the fog of confusion about climate change and human interaction with the Earth’s environment.

There remain large uncertainties in our understanding of the climate and greater uncertainty in the impact of climate change on human civilization. Addressing these uncertainties requires hard work and more observations, scrupulous attention to data calibration and validation, data examination, inter-comparing model projection and quantifying their uncertainties, understanding the differences, criticizing results. We believe that GEOSS, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, has the potential to provide the observations and infrastructure needed for climate monitoring, understanding and prediction. The serious message sent by the climate research community is disturbing to most people; powerful interests are at stake that will entail drastic reorientation of energy sources and economic development. But an even higher interest is at stake: that of our children and of future generations. Our descendants deserve as clear a sky as we can bequeath to them.

About The Authors Jean-Louis Fellous and Catherine Gautier

Dr. Jean-Louis Fellous

Jean Louis Fellous is the Executive Director of COSPAR (ICSU Committee on Space Research) in Paris, France. An atmospheric scientist by training, Dr. Fellous was program manager of the U.S.-French ocean satellite TOPEX/Poseidon launched in 1992. He led Earth Observation programs at CNES until 2001 and ocean research at IFREMER until 2005. He was elected co-president of JCOMM (the WMO/IOC Joint Commission on Oceanography and Marine Meteorology) in 2005. In mid-2005 Fellous was seconded by the CNES to the European Space Agency, and later appointed as the Executive Officer of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), a position he held through 2007.

Dr. Catherine Gautier

Catherine Gautier, an Earth System scientist, is professor of Geography and principal investigator of The Institute for Computational Earth System Science (ICESS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara campus. Dr. Gautier works in an environment in which Earth and computer science are strongly coupled. Her focus is on research and graduate education in Earth system sciences (the science of climate change), with emphasis on processes governing the radiative processes of the Earth. Previous appointments include serving as director of the Institute of Computational Earth System Science, 1996-2002, chief executive officer of Planet Earth Science Inc., 1994-2004, and associate director and associate research meteorologist, California Space Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego from 1982-1990.

Fellous and Gautier are co-authors/or editors of three recent books on climate change. Gautier is sole author of one.

Gautier and J-L Fellous, 2008: Eau, Petrole, Climat: Un Monde en Panne Seche, Book, pp 320, Odile Jacob, Paris, France.

Gautier C. and J-L Fellous, 2008 (co-editors): Facing climate change together, Book, pp 257, Cambridge University Press.

Gautier C., 2008: Oil, Water and Climate: An Introduction, Book, pp 366, Cambridge University Press.

Fellous J-L and C. Gautier, 2007 (co-editors): Comprendre le changement climatique. Book, Odile Jacob, Paris, France.

Editor’s Note: The diversity of viewpoints and opinions on Earth observations and sustainability is extensive. To accommodate and foster the benefits of this diversity, Earthzine encourages the inclusion of a wide range of perspectives in a vibrant discourse on relevant contemporary issues. Considerate debate and thoughtful discussion are encouraged in comments posted on Earthzine’s blog. Please consult the Earthzine Editorial Policy for further detail and consider submitting an opinion essay.

I am trying something new, a blogospheric experiment, if you will. I have been a fairly active participant in the blogosphere since 2006, and recently posted two essays on climategate, one at climateaudit.org and the other at climateprogress.org. Both essays were subsequently picked up by other blogs, and the diversity of opinions expressed at the different blogs was quite interesting. Hence I am distributing this essay to a number of different blogs simultaneously with the hope of demonstrating the collective power of the blogosphere to generate ideas and debate them. I look forward to a stimulating discussion on this important topic.

Losing the Public’s Trust

Climategate has now become broadened in scope to extend beyond the CRU emails to include glaciergate and a host of other issues associated with the IPCC. In responding to climategate, the climate research establishment has appealed to its own authority and failed to understand that climategate is primarily a crisis of trust. Finally, we have an editorial published in Science on February 10 from Ralph Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Science, that begins to articulate the trust issue: “This view reflects the fragile nature of trust between science and society, demonstrating that the perceived misbehavior of even a few scientists can diminish the credibility of science as a whole. What needs to be done? Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” While I applaud loudly Dr. Cicerone’s statement, I wish it had been made earlier and had not been isolated from the public by publishing the statement behind paywall at Science. Unfortunately, the void of substantive statements from our institutions has been filled in ways that have made the situation much worse.

Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. While scientists persist in thinking that they should be trusted because of their expertise, climategate has made it clear that expertise itself is not a sufficient basis for public trust. The fallout from climategate is much broader than the allegations of misconduct by scientists at two universities. Of greatest importance is the reduced credibility of the IPCC assessment reports, which are providing the scientific basis for international policies on climate change. Recent disclosures about the IPCC have brought up a host of concerns about the IPCC that had been festering in the background: involvement of IPCC scientists in explicit climate policy advocacy; tribalism that excluded skeptics; hubris of scientists with regards to a noble (Nobel) cause; alarmism; and inadequate attention to the statistics of uncertainty and the complexity of alternative interpretations.

The scientists involved in the CRU emails and the IPCC have been defended as scientists with the best of intentions trying to do their work in a very difficult environment. They blame the alleged hacking incident on the “climate denial machine.” They are described as fighting a valiant war to keep misinformation from the public that is being pushed by skeptics with links to the oil industry. They are focused on moving the science forward, rather than the janitorial work of record keeping, data archival, etc. They have had to adopt unconventional strategies to fight off what they thought was malicious interference. They defend their science based upon their years of experience and their expertise.

Scientists are claiming that the scientific content of the IPCC reports is not compromised by climategate. The jury is still out on the specific fallout from climategate in terms of the historical and paleo temperature records. There are larger concerns (raised by glaciergate, etc.) particularly with regards to the IPCC Assessment Report on Impacts (Working Group II): has a combination of groupthink, political advocacy and a noble cause syndrome stifled scientific debate, slowed down scientific progress and corrupted the assessment process? If institutions are doing their jobs, then misconduct by a few individual scientists should be quickly identified, and the impacts of the misconduct should be confined and quickly rectified. Institutions need to look in the mirror and ask the question as to how they enabled this situation and what opportunities they missed to forestall such substantial loss of public trust in climate research and the major assessment reports.

In their misguided war against the skeptics, the CRU emails reveal that core research values became compromised. Much has been said about the role of the highly politicized environment in providing an extremely difficult environment in which to conduct science that produces a lot of stress for the scientists. There is no question that this environment is not conducive to science and scientists need more support from their institutions in dealing with it. However, there is nothing in this crazy environment that is worth sacrificing your personal or professional integrity. And when your science receives this kind of attention, it means that the science is really important to the public. Therefore scientists need to do everything possible to make sure that they effectively communicate uncertainty, risk, probability and complexity, and provide a context that includes alternative and competing scientific viewpoints. This is an important responsibility that individual scientists and particularly the institutions need to take very seriously.

Both individual scientists and the institutions need to look in the mirror and really understand how this happened. Climategate isn’t going to go away until these issues are resolved. Science is ultimately a self-correcting process, but with a major international treaty and far-reaching domestic legislation on the table, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

The Changing Nature of Skepticism about Global Warming

Over the last few months, I have been trying to understand how this insane environment for climate research developed. In my informal investigations, I have been listening to the perspectives of a broad range of people that have been labeled as “skeptics” or even “deniers”. I have come to understand that global warming skepticism is very different now than it was five years ago. Here is my take on how global warming skepticism has evolved over the past several decades.

In the 1980’s, James Hansen and Steven Schneider led the charge in informing the public of the risks of potential anthropogenic climate change. Sir John Houghton and Bert Bolin played similar roles in Europe. This charge was embraced by the environmental advocacy groups, and global warming alarmism was born. During this period I would say that many if not most researchers, including myself, were skeptical that global warming was detectable in the temperature record and that it would have dire consequences. The traditional foes of the environmental movement worked to counter the alarmism of the environmental movement, but this was mostly a war between advocacy groups and not an issue that had taken hold in the mainstream media and the public consciousness. In the first few years of the 21st century, the stakes became higher and we saw the birth of what some have called a “monolithic climate denial machine”. Skeptical research published by academics provided fodder for the think tanks and advocacy groups, which were fed by money provided by the oil industry. This was all amplified by talk radio and cable news.

In 2006 and 2007, things changed as a result of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth plus the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, and global warming became a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut. The reason that the IPCC 4th Assessment Report was so influential is that people trusted the process the IPCC described: participation of a thousand scientists from 100 different countries, who worked for several years to produce 3000 pages with thousands of peer reviewed scientific references, with extensive peer review. Further, the process was undertaken with the participation of policy makers under the watchful eyes of advocacy groups with a broad range of conflicting interests. As a result of the IPCC influence, scientific skepticism by academic researchers became vastly diminished and it became easier to embellish the IPCC findings rather than to buck the juggernaut. Big oil funding for contrary views mostly dried up and the mainstream media supported the IPCC consensus. But there was a new movement in the blogosphere, which I refer to as the “climate auditors”, started by Steve McIntyre. The climate change establishment failed to understand this changing dynamic, and continued to blame skepticism on the denial machine funded by big oil.

Climate Auditors and the Blogosphere

Steve McIntyre started the blog climateaudit.org so that he could defend himself against claims being made at the blog realclimate.org with regards to his critique of the “hockey stick” since he was unable to post his comments there. Climateaudit has focused on auditing topics related to the paleoclimate reconstructions over the past millennia (in particular the so called “hockey stick”) and also the software being used by climate researchers to fix data problems due to poor quality surface weather stations in the historical climate data record. McIntyre’s “auditing” became very popular not only with the skeptics, but also with the progressive “open source” community, and there are now a number of such blogs. The blog with the largest public audience is wattsupwiththat.com, led by weatherman Anthony Watts, with over 2 million unique visitors each month.

An image of an extratropical cyclone named Xynthia that brought hurricane-force winds and high waves to Western Europe at the end of February 2010 captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.

So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have developed substantial expertise in aspects of climate science, although they mainly audit rather than produce original scientific research. They tend to be watchdogs rather than deniers; many of them classify themselves as “lukewarmers”. They are independent of oil industry influence. They have found a collective voice in the blogosphere and their posts are often picked up by the mainstream media. They are demanding greater accountability and transparency of climate research and assessment reports.

So what motivated their FOIA requests of the CRU at the University of East Anglia? Last weekend, I was part of a discussion on this issue at the Blackboard. Among the participants in this discussion was Steven Mosher, who broke the climategate story and has already written a book on it here. They are concerned about inadvertent introduction of bias into the CRU temperature data by having the same people who create the dataset use the dataset in research and in verifying climate models; this concern applies to both NASA GISS and the connection between CRU and the Hadley Centre. This concern is exacerbated by the choice of James Hansen at NASA GISS to become a policy advocate, and his forecasts of forthcoming “warmest years.” Medical research has long been concerned with the introduction of such bias, which is why they conduct double blind studies when testing the efficacy of a medical treatment. Any such bias could be checked by independent analyses of the data; however, people outside the inner circle were unable to obtain access to the information required to link the raw data to the final analyzed product. Further, creation of the surface data sets was treated like a research project, with no emphasis on data quality analysis, and there was no independent oversight. Given the importance of these data sets both to scientific research and public policy, they feel that greater public accountability is required.

So why do the mainstream climate researchers have such a problem with the climate auditors? The scientists involved in the CRU emails seem to regard Steve McIntyre as their arch-nemesis (Roger Pielke Jr‘s term). Steve McIntyre’s early critiques of the hockey stick were dismissed and he was characterized as a shill for the oil industry. Academic/blogospheric guerilla warfare ensued, as the academic researchers tried to prevent access of the climate auditors to publishing in scientific journals and presenting their work at professional conferences, and tried to deny them access to published research data and computer programs. The bloggers countered with highly critical posts in the blogosphere and FOIA requests. And climategate was the result.

So how did this group of bloggers succeed in bringing the climate establishment to its knees (whether or not the climate establishment realizes yet that this has happened)? Again, trust plays a big role; it was pretty easy to follow the money trail associated with the “denial machine”. On the other hand, the climate auditors have no apparent political agenda, are doing this work for free, and have been playing a watchdog role, which has engendered the trust of a large segment of the population.

Towards Rebuilding Trust

Rebuilding trust with the public on the subject of climate research starts with Ralph Cicerone’s statement “Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” Much has been written about the need for greater transparency, reforms to peer review, etc. and I am hopeful that the relevant institutions will respond appropriately. Investigations of misconduct are being conducted at the University of East Anglia and at Penn State. Here I would like to bring up some broader issues that will require substantial reflection by the institutions and also by individual scientists.

Climate research and its institutions have not yet adapted to its high policy relevance. How scientists can most effectively and appropriately engage with the policy process is a topic that has not been adequately discussed (e.g. the “honest broker” challenge discussed by Roger Pielke Jr), and climate researchers are poorly informed in this regard. The result has been reflexive support for the UNFCCC policy agenda (e.g. carbon cap and trade) by many climate researchers that are involved in the public debate (particularly those involved in the IPCC), which they believe follows logically from the findings of the (allegedly policy neutral) IPCC. The often misinformed policy advocacy by this group of climate scientists has played a role in the political polarization of this issue.. The interface between science and policy is a muddy issue, but it is very important that scientists have guidance in navigating the potential pitfalls. Improving this situation could help defuse the hostile environment that scientists involved in the public debate have to deal with, and would also help restore the public trust of climate scientists.

The failure of the public and policy makers to understand the truth as presented by the IPCC is often blamed on difficulties of communicating such a complex topic to a relatively uneducated public that is referred to as “unscientific America” by Chris Mooney. Efforts are made to “dumb down” the message and to frame the message to respond to issues that are salient to the audience. People have heard the alarm, but they remain unconvinced because of a perceived political agenda and lack of trust of the message and the messengers. At the same time, there is a large group of educated and evidence driven people (e.g. the libertarians, people that read the technical skeptic blogs, not to mention policy makers) who want to understand the risk and uncertainties associated with climate change, without being told what kinds of policies they should be supporting. More effective communication strategies can be devised by recognizing that there are two groups with different levels of base knowledge about the topic. But building trust through public communication on this topic requires that uncertainty be acknowledged. My own experience in making public presentations about climate change has found that discussing the uncertainties increases the public trust in what scientists are trying to convey and doesn’t detract from the receptivity to understanding climate change risks (they distrust alarmism). Trust can also be rebuilt by discussing broad choices rather than focusing on specific policies.

And finally, the blogosphere can be a very powerful tool for increasing the credibility of climate research. “Dueling blogs” (e.g. climateprogress.org versus wattsupwiththat.com and realclimate.org versus climateaudit.org) can actually enhance public trust in the science as they see both sides of the arguments being discussed. Debating science with skeptics should be the spice of academic life, but many climate researchers lost this somehow by mistakenly thinking that skeptical arguments would diminish the public trust in the message coming from the climate research establishment. Such debate is alive and well in the blogosphere, but few mainstream climate researchers participate in the blogospheric debate. The climate researchers at realclimate.org were the pioneers in this, and other academic climate researchers hosting blogs include Roy Spencer, Roger Pielke Sr and Jr, Richard Rood, and Andrew Dessler. The blogs that are most effective are those that allow comments from both sides of the debate (many blogs are heavily moderated). While the blogosphere has a “wild west” aspect to it, I have certainly learned a lot by participating in the blogospheric debate including how to sharpen my thinking and improve the rhetoric of my arguments. Additional scientific voices entering the public debate particularly in the blogosphere would help in the broader communication efforts and in rebuilding trust. And we need to acknowledge the emerging auditing and open source movements in the Internet-enabled world, and put them to productive use. The openness and democratization of knowledge enabled by the Internet can be a tremendous tool for building public understanding of climate science and also trust in climate research.

No one really believes that the “science is settled” or that “the debate is over.” Scientists and others that say this seem to want to advance a particular agenda. There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than such statements.

Dr. Judith Curry.

And finally, I hope that this blogospheric experiment will demonstrate how the diversity of the different blogs can be used collectively to generate ideas and debate them, towards bringing some sanity to this whole situation surrounding the politicization of climate science and rebuilding trust with the public.

Judith A. Curry, Ph.D. is professor and chairperson of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include remote sensing, climate of the polar regions, atmospheric modeling, and air/sea interactions. The Op-Ed posted here addresses her views on what has become a global controversy about climate science. Her stated aim is to stimulate constructive debate by this essay about the critical scientific research on climate, and about the roles and responsibilities of scientists. Comments are welcome on this and every Earthzine article.

This has been an exciting competition from the opening announcement on July 9, 2009 at the annual IGARSS conference in Cape Town, South Africa to the close of  blogging on December 15. The contest received enquiries and essays from students around the globe. This response met our overall goal of stimulating thinking about sustainability worldwide. We are deeply appreciative of the efforts of all the contestants who submitted essays, the finalists for maintaining engaging blogs and the dozens who raised the level of discourse by posting thought-provoking comments and questions.

We are also deeply appreciative of the competition judges, who selected the seven finalists and chose the winners on the basis of their essay blogs. We also congratulate Dr. David F. Mullins, Associate Editor for Education, for doing an excellent job managing Earthzine’s first essay competition. We are grateful to the IEEE Foundation for sponsoring the competition and its prizes.

If you haven’t read these essays already, please take a few moments to do so. I think you will share our feelings of encouragement and hope that the passionate commitment evidenced by these students will be utilized in their home countries. Each essay demonstrates the great potential  Earth observation has for discovering and implementing sustainable remedies for the difficult environmental problems we are experiencing on Earth.

Please stay connected to www.Earthzine.org for notice of the 2010 Student Essay Competition!

Paul E. Racette, D.Sc.
Editor-in-Chief