Last week, I wrote about how ethics comes into play in our thinking - or not thinking - about climate change. Even more importantly, though, we have to have facts - proven facts - to back up any claims we make about climate.  Dr. Marty Mlynczak, a senior research scientist based at NASA’s Langley, Virginia research centre is all about finding out the facts.  Technology he developed gives us even greater access to data about the atmosphere. When we think of climate change we tend to think only... [Read more]

The next UN Climate Change Conference,  COP15, in Copenhagen, Denmark is only six weeks away.  Around the world, delegates are jostling to establish which countries should be granted the greatest number of carbon offsets, and who is really at fault for the evolutionary pickle we find ourselves in. Tempting though it is to think we can barter our way out of it, climate will continue to plague us.  And unfortunately, in the US we’re still suffering from the diplomatic and greenhouse gas emission... [Read more]

EOS satellites monitor climate from space The  Earth Observing System (EOS), launched in 1999, uses a series of polar-orbiting satellites to study clouds, the oceans, atmospheric chemistry, as well as water and ecosystem processes and land masses.  Dr. Steve Running, of the University of Montana wrote about why NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) mission was so important at its inception on December 16, 1999.  He wrote:  “Dec 16, 1999, maybe fittingly at the end of this millennium, we... [Read more]

Although mathematical modelling of climate trends and weather patterns tells us a great deal about climate change, it has an inherent flaw:  we tend to substitute the map for the territory.  Climate models are good at showing trends on a large scale, the same way a map of North America tell us about large-scale geographical features.  A map depicts mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, plains and estuaries, but it doesn’t tell us anything about rainfall variability in Toledo, Ohio, nor about the... [Read more]

Dr. Philip Rasch focuses on understanding the connections between clouds, chemistry, and the climate. He co-chairs the Atmospheric Model Working Group of the Community Climate System Model project. Dr. Rasch and his team create mathematical models of what the Earth’s climate might look like in the future by varying their assumptions about conditions such as carbon dioxide concentration and temperature. Each of the scenarios created using these models provides insights into what we can do to ameliorate... [Read more]