The Maldives are a great location for such an experiment because during the months of November through March, the country experiences its dry season with respect to the monsoon, and pollutant heavy air can be seen traveling from thousands of kilometers away from countries like India and Pakistan.  Furthermore, the island nation has a low elevation and is extremely sensitive to changes in sea level rise.

A map of the Maldives. From Worldatlas.com

Through the research, Ramanathan and his colleagues discovered that these pollutants are primarily composed of black carbon soot that comes from the burning of fossil fuels and biomass.  With the longevity of the research, they were able to understand that there is a strong heating effect of these pollutants.   But black carbon soot affects more than air temperature – it destroys millions of tons of crops annually and causes human health concerns.  The good news is that this type of emission is easy to reduce due to the face that its lifespan in the atmosphere is short.

Sources of black carbon emission. From AGU.org

If these types of pollutants are reduced quickly, the long-term negative effects of climate change can be reduced by nearly 50% in the next 20-30 years.  With Ramanathan’s research, The Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) was established.  The CCAC is focusing on the reduction of short lived pollutants by nearly one third to protect and improve human health and agriculture.

And while the relationship between black carbon soot and warming is better understood, and has recently been presented by the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project, the affect the black carbon has on clouds and the type that form is still unknown.  Further research is necessary to understand the feedback between black carbon affected clouds and climate change.

Suggested activity: If you’re a GLOBE school in an area that sees seasonal fluctuations in air quality, you can perform your own research study to see the affect that air pollution has on your local temperature, cloud type and cloud cover.  Start by taking air temperature, cloud clover, cloud type and aerosol measurements and enter them into the GLOBE database.  Then as your database grows, start to examine the relationships that exist between the variables.  Then, be sure to tell us about it.  You can share your future research plans with us through a comment, email or on our Facebook Page.  For more information on Ramanathan’s research, watch this video.

-Jessica Mackaro

An intricate network of soil microorganisms From: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CISRO).

The study, performed by scientists from the University of New Hampshire, the University of California-Davis and the Marine Biological Laboratory, examined how microorganisms in the soil respond to temperature changes.  By learning more about that process, scientists could then improve the prediction of how much carbon dioxide is released from the soil.

Microorganisms in the soil release carbon dioxide as a byproduct of how they utilize their food source.  There are two types of food sources: glucose, a simple food source that is release from plant roots, and phenol, a complex food source that comes from decomposing organic matter such as wood and leaves.  Under normal conditions, they release at least 10 times the amount of carbon dioxide that human activities do in a year through the breakdown of these two food sources.  For a perspective on what this amount means, take a look at the graph below, taken from a study from 2010.

Time series of global carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Image from EPA.

This dramatic amount of carbon dioxide is usually absorbed through the root uptake of trees.  But if the soil warms too much, then these microorganisms are not as efficient at breaking down their food, and thus release more carbon dioxide as they expend the energy.  They are then over-producing, and the trees and plants will not take up as much.  In the short term, it may lead to a positive feedback cycle – where more carbon dioxide is emitted contributing to the rising amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

However, this same research showed that these microorganisms may have the once again become efficient with their food breakdown after many years of warmer soil temperatures.  After approximately 18 years, the community once again became efficient in their ability to break down food.  This may be due to one of the following things: a change in the community of microorganisms (i.e. the type of microorganism changes), a change in the available nutrients,  and/or species adaptation.

While GLOBE doesn’t have protocols to look directly at microorganisms in the soil, it does have protocols to examine soil temperature.  This is just as important, because soil temperature directly affects many things, such as the timing of Budburst, Green Up and Green Down.  The timing of the phenological processes is important because it informs farmers when to plant crops.   For these reasons, it is very valuable to collect soil temperature data and monitor its changes through the seasons and years.

Suggested activity: Have you collecting soil temperature data?  Did you participate in December’s Surface Temperature Field Campaign?  Have you seen any changes?  We’d love to hear about your experience!  Leave a comment, share with us on our Facebook page, or send us an email.  And make sure you enter the data you’re collecting into the GLOBE database!

-Jessica Mackaro

The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland marked by the spectacular “curtain-of-fire” and near-complete shut-down of air travel in Europe in mid-April will probably earn a place in the history books (see pictures of the Icelandic volcano at the Washington Post.)

The Icelandic Volcano. Credit: Washington Post

Two of the most commonly cited volcanic eruptions in the climate literature are Krakatua (1883; Indonesia) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991; Philippines). The most massive explosions of Krakatua took place in August, 1883, and rank among the most violent volcanic events in recorded history. In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures reportedly fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide gas high into the stratosphere, which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfurous acid concentration in high-level cirrus clouds and the clouds became brighter. The increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) meant that more incoming light from the sun than usual was reflected back to space, and as a result, the entire planet became cooler, until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.

In June 1991, the best-documented explosive volcanic event to date and the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century took place on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, a mere 90 kilometers northwest of the capital city Manila. Up to 800 people were killed and 100,000 became homeless following the Mount Pinatubo eruption, which climaxed with nine hours of eruption on June 15, 1991. On June 15, millions of tons of sulfur dioxide were discharged into the atmosphere, resulting in a decrease in the temperature worldwide over the next few years.

Pinatubo eruption provided scientists with a basis for constructing or modeling the change in Earth’s radiation balance (scientists like to call this change “radiative forcing”) due to explosive volcanoes. It is now well established that volcanic eruptions cause the stratosphere to warm and the annual mean surface and tropospheric temperature decreases during a period of two to three years following a major volcanic eruption. If you are interested in more technical details on how volcanoes affect climate, you can read a very good paper written by Alan Robock. Given that the Icelandic eruption is along a Mid-Ocean ridge and volcanic Hot spot, do you think the gases and aerosols will be of different composition than the Krakatoa and Pinatubo eruptions, which are associated with plate subduction along convergent plate boundaries? If there is a difference, what effect might that have on weather and climate over the next few years?

So the disruption of the air travel by the Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull Volcanic eruptions is just the beginning; other weather and climatic effects will follow.  In the days and months ahead, we are likely to experience darkened sky and spectacular sunsets in different parts of the world.

A few weeks ago I spent an evening visiting relatives (they shall remain unidentified to protect the guilty).  When I arrived at the house, there were several lights on.  I rang the doorbell.  I knocked.  The dog barked, but no one answered.  The door was not locked, so I went into the house and said hello to the dog.  The house has a main floor, an upper floor, and a basement.  There were lights on at all three levels.  I called out – no one answered on the main level.  I went to the stairs and called up – no one answered.  I went to the basement stairs and called down – still no answer, but now I could hear voices.  I walked downstairs and found the television on, but still no people.  Hmmmm….

I headed back to the main level.  At that point, the parents of the family came home and I learned that their boys had been home most recently, and had left all these lights and things on.   Hmmm….

There has been much discussion about how sure we are about the prospects for climate change and resulting bad effects, and whether therefore we need to begin to take action now.  While we do not yet know the exact timing, size, and details of these bad impacts, this experience with the “house of lights” made me wonder:  How sure would someone have to be about climate change impacts to take such simple actions as turning off the light or the television when they are not even in the room (or the house!)?

An interesting – and entertaining – discussion on the related question of risk assessment can be found on YouTube.

Teddy Roosevelt, US President from 1901-1909 said:  “[Future generations] will reproach us, not for what we have used, but for what we have wasted…”

In this case, it was the other way around:  I found myself reproaching the younger generation for the waste in the “house of lights”.  Because really, one of the best and easiest ways to address the risks of climate change is to stop wasting energy and it is also a win-win-win-win scenario:
Win 1:  It reduces power bills (saves money)
Win 2:  It reduces the demand for energy and thus the need to construct more power plants
Win 3:  It reduces the pollution created as a by product of electricity generation
Win 4:  It reduces the emission of greenhouse gases that trap additional heat in our atmosphere.

Some might make the argument that turning lights off has other negative consequences, but the TV show Myth Busters demonstrated very scientifically that this is not the case.

Others might argue that one person turning out a light can’t possibly make a difference, but here is a nice activity that presents some back of the envelope calculations on how the impact can be multiplied if every “one” person takes that same action. It adds up!

So how about it?  Are you sure enough about the possible risks to turn off lights you aren’t using?  Given the win-win-win-win of the situation, I know I am!

“Daddy, how long is a billion years?”

As soon as we got in the car this morning, and buckled up, I said “so Jordi, I need some help. I need more material for the blog.” “Daddy, what do you mean by ‘material’?”  “That’s what writers call the stuff they use to create stories”, said daddy.

Earth from MESSENGER spacecraft as it flew by Earth on August 2, 2005. MESSENGER goes into orbit around Mercury on March 18, 2011.

It was a beautiful, sunny morning, so he started talking about … the Sun. He had lots of questions—where did it come from, what’s burning on it to make it so bright, how old is it, what will happen to Earth when it stops burning? The last one was particularly cool. I asked him if he thought the question “what will happen to the Earth when the Sun dies?” is something lots of kids might ask. He said “yes!!” I asked him who he thought was the first person to actually figure it out. He didn’t know. I told him it was me.

When I was a grad student at Penn, one of the undergrads in the class I was teaching asked that question. I didn’t know the answer, so I told her I’d find out. I tried but I couldn’t. Nobody had done it before. So I decided to be the first. I didn’t know if I could, and I didn’t know what I’d find, but it was incredibly exciting—and that’s science. Here’s the result. (And it was far from the end of the story.)

Jordi said, “YOU DID?” I looked at his surprised face in the rearview mirror and said “yup, your daddy.” Then he said, “that’s sooo strange! That’s sooo cool! I asked a question that YOU figured out!!” He was very proud. I felt so connected to him. (We’ll see later if he told his friends.) And I promise that I’ll make this story into a blog post, because now YOU’RE waiting for the rest of the story.

By the time we arrived at the school 20 minutes later, I had a month’s worth of ‘material’ for Driving with Jordi (stay tuned). The conversation was incredible. At one point though, Jordi ran into a conceptual wall when I was talking about the Sun’s lifetime being 10 billion years, and that it’s now half way through its life. He said “Daddy, how long is a billion years?”—which is why I wrote this post.

It is actually such an important question, and I thought about it all the way home. It’s at the heart of a key recurring problem in science education in that the VAST majority of humans truly don’t understand lengths of time that are far longer than our lifetimes. No wonder that folks don’t understand global warming as due to human intervention, and think it reasonable to interpret the data as explained by natural variation in the environment over long timescales. No wonder that folks don’t understand the timescales for evolution of species.

So here now is a novel way to look at it. Thanks Jordi! I think this will help lots of folks understand something they’ve never understood before.

Humans and Time

We humans now live on average about 75 years (in the developed world; in Africa the life expectancy is frighteningly low at 32 to 55). I’ll assume that 75 years is the life expectancy of a human in the absence of devastating diseases like AIDS, and with availability to modern medicine.

We humans also like to perceive the passage of time in units of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. We’ve created these units because they are comfortable, connected to the rhythms in the sky and in our bodies, and each is used to make sense of events both short and long. Here’s the critical point for the rest of the story—

One of our average humans sees 75 years x 365.25 days/year =27,394 days in their life

That’s amazing. That’s 27,394 days of getting up in the morning, eating, working, playing, relaxing, and going to bed. Put this way, the length of a single day is absolutely inconsequential relative to a human lifetime. Agreed? Good.

A Really Cool Diary

So let’s say I had this really cool diary with one page for every day of our average human’s life. It’s a single book with 27,394 pages. I could give it to you at birth and ask you to record your life one page—one day—at a time (with some help from a friend in your early and possibly later years). Like I said, one cool diary.

A Day in the Life of the Earth

Let’s say planet Earth was this large cosmic creature. She’s got a life expectancy of about 10 billion years, from her birth with the Sun nearly 5 billion years ago, to her ultimate fate when the Sun is in its waning years some 5 billion years from now (nope not telling).

Earth obviously has a lot to say, and SHE’s been keeping a diary since she was born. But she’s got it in far too many volumes, since each didn’t come with many pages, and they’re all old and worn out. Hey, I think a new diary is a perfect gift for her! I’ll give her one of my really cool diaries with 27,394 pages. I’ll help her move all her old diary entries into the new one so it will truly record her 10 billion year life. Why don’t we call each page a GEOLOGIC DAY (a Dr. Jeff made-up term.) And every Geologic Day is absolutely inconsequential relative to Earth’s lifetime. After all, Earth has 27,394 of them.

Every Geologic Day, Earth will write in her diary the comings and goings for that day. Here’s the next important point—

Every one of the 27,394 pages in Earth’s diary—each Geologic Day—is 365,000 years long.enough time for 14,600 human generations

How come? Easy: 10 billion years divided by 27,394.

Take a minute to process that.

I hope this gives you a new perspective for spans of time for Earth—called geologic time—relative to the time span for our fleeting lives.

So I give my friend the Earth one of my cool diaries. She likes it—her life all in one book. I also happen to be very close with Earth, and she’s letting me look at her diary. So here we are in the middle of her life and she just now finished her entry for day 13,697. She’s already written the first 13,696 pages (I helped her transfer the entries from her old diary with Apple Time Capsule.) Here now is her page 13,697—

Dear diary-

Today, as always, I’m going to keep a watchful eye across my surface. It’s an important responsibility being an oasis of life in a vast space. I’m very aware that all the countless forms of life living on me depend on a very delicate balance of surface conditions. Every Geologic Day, I hope I can avoid asteroids, comets, and super volcanoes, all examples of catastrophic events that have wreaked havoc with my sphere of life—my biosphere—in the past.

Today started out as pretty routine with lots of new things to see. I’m still watching those bipedal creatures that first appeared about 6 Geologic Days ago. Over the last few days, it looked like there were a few different species of them. But by late today I’m pretty sure there was only one dominant species left. I’m fascinated with them. They’re intelligent. They make tools.

Well, time to stop writing it’s just about the next Geologic Day. There’s only 35 Geologic Seconds left in this one (150 years to us humans). Wait … did you see that?! Carbon dioxide levels in my atmosphere just spiked! This just can’t be right! All of a sudden carbon dioxide is at the highest level it’s been in at least 2 Geologic Days (800,000 years) … maybe even 50 Geologic Days (20 million years)!

This is serious. Carbon dioxide might seem innocent enough—my diversity of life creates and uses it. But my neighbor Venus has an atmosphere that is 96% carbon dioxide, and while her surface should be about 125°F (50°C) at her distance from the Sun, the actual temperature is 880 °F (470 °C)—hot enough to melt lead. Carbon dioxide is a gas that induces a greenhouse effect on a planet, causing elevated surface temperatures, and in the case of Venus the effect is absolutely extreme. In my case, my biosphere is in a delicate balance, and even though carbon dioxide is a trace gas, a substantial percentage increase can cause dramatic changes in the environment.

IN AN ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLY SMALL AMOUNT OF TIME—carbon dioxide in my atmosphere has skyrocketed by 60% over typical levels. Its increase is nothing short of—stunning. This is not due to natural cycles. No natural variation would happen this fast. This is the signature of a CATASTROPHIC EVENT. Some global scale, very short event that should be OBVIOUS. But I see no obvious crater, no super volcano … let me keep looking.

Wait. What’s happening now?! The temperature just spiked! Global temperature variation over the recent past shows “little ice ages” and warming trends, but what I’m seeing now is a SPIKE—a very quick change— that looks very different than those natural temperature variations. The global temperature is now CLEARLY INCREASING, and higher than it’s been recently (us humans currently have the ability to gauge it over the last 2,000 years), and it spiked at the same time as did the carbon dioxide.

This is very bad. Warnings are now coming in from everywhere—rapidly decreasing sea ice, rapid glacial melt. There has to be a cause. Something’s happened. Something’s different. This looks like the start of an irreversible change in the global environment. I’ve got to find out what’s happening before it’s too late for countless species on my surface. Let me keep looking and see if I can find something big that’s happened in this INSTANT in time … a trigger … something OBVIOUS.

Wait …. it’s … it’s the bipeds! OH NO … they’re everywhere! Their technology is EVERYWHERE—just in the last 35 Geologic Seconds! It’s an infestation!

They have got to be stopped. They’re supposed to be intelligent … maybe not. But I’ve got to try reasoning with them.

HEY YOU!! Look at the data!! Look at the data!! Quick! Quick!

What are you doing! Stop! Are you crazy?! Do you think you can load my atmosphere with those levels of emissions from your technology—in a blinding instant of time—and not impact me? Do you think my systems are capable of scrubbing the atmosphere that fast?  MY SYSTEMS DON’T WORK ON TIMESCALES OF 35 GEOLOGIC SECONDS!!

…not enough of them are listening

They’re too busy, too pre-occupied … with themselves.

They don’t seem to care if they are committing suicide. Their choice. But … they don’t have the right to take countless other life forms with them. I’ve got to put in an emergency call to Interplanetary Pest Control, or … tomorrow will be a very bad day.

(Note to reader: spread the word on climate change. I’d argue you have a duty to spread the word. You should Tweet this one up planet-wide. And be moved to leave a comment.)

To Teachers:

You can really make this a powerful visual demonstration in class. The life of Earth recorded on 27,394 sheets of paper is a challenge to demonstrate. But if you can borrow some cartons of xerox paper, with each carton containing typically 10 reams, then here is what I’d do. Each ream contains 500 sheets. So you need 5 full cartons (that’s 50 reams = 25,000 sheets) + 4 reams (another 2,000 sheets) + 394 sheets.

Without telling the class anything about what you are doing, have them take the reams out of the boxes (without opening them) and lay them out on the floor. Have them open one ream to see how many sheets are in it. In fact, have them count the sheets in the ream and take out the 394 sheets you need. Then:

• walk them through the concept of a single diary for an average human lifetime: they should calculate how many diary pages they would need if there is one page per day; then have them calculate how many sheets are on the floor—”oh, the number of days in a human lifetime!  WOW!!  That’s a lot of days for a human!”

• let them in on the idea of giving this diary to Earth, and assuming a lifetime of 10 billion years, have them calculate how many years of history are on EACH sheet—”365.000 years! No way!!” Then have them calculate the equivalent number of human generations on one sheet assuming 25 years per generation (a reasonable time from parent birth to child of parent birth)—”Can that be right? 14,600 generations!?”

• re-arrange the paper with half of it on one side of the floor to represent Earth’s history that is already recorded,and the other half on the other side of the floor representing Earth’s future history.

• then pick the single sheet of paper that represents the last 365,000 years of history, so that on this sheet, the final diary entry is the present. Lay it between the two groups of paper representing the past and future history of Earth.

Ask the class to think about this sheet of paper as a 24-hour clock. So at time 0:00:00, you’re at the beginning of the sheet, 365,000 years ago. At time 12:00:00 you’re in the middle of the sheet 182,500 years ago. At time 24:00:00 you’re in the present moment, where you all happen to be sitting in class.

Ask them to calculate the time on the clock when human civilization began (10,000 years ago, answer: at time 23:20:19); when the industrial age began (the age of fossil fuels; 150 years ago, answer: at time 23:59:25).

Have them look at world population growth noting what’s happened during the age of fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide level over the last 650,000 years, and the world temperature over the last 2,000 years. What is the data telling you?

• have them figure out how many sheets ago the dinosaur extinction took place.

• have them research Earth’s geological history, and figure out which sheets contain other milestones or important intervals in Earth’s history.

This should be MIND BLOWING! It is an experience your students will likely remember for a lifetime.

* * *

Image courtesy NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Carnegie Institution of Washington.

From Dr. James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, concerning this post—Public understanding of climate change depends on an understanding of time scales. Goldstein [Dr. Jeff] does a brilliant job of making clear the rapidity of the human-made intervention in the climate system, and the correlation of global warming with the appearance of technology powered by fossil fuels.

Image courtesy NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Well, today is my last day here in Copenhagen, unfortunately. The Climate Conference is such an interesting meeting and there is so much to learn. However, it is not possible to stay the entire two weeks. As I reflect on my short time here I am struck how the entire city of Copenhagen and the Danish government has built upon their already eco-friendly infrastructure to provide a “green” experience for those of us attending the conference.

well marked bus routes

Upon arrival at the airport, staff was in place to direct us to a free shuttle to the Bella Center. Once I registered and entered the conference, I was provided with a free transportation pass – courtesy of the local government. This transportation pass provided access to the Metro, all buses and trains. This made all of us in attendance feel better about the fact that many of us just flew half way across the world, leaving a trail of significant greenhouse gas emissions in our wake.

As I was taking the shuttle to the Bella Center one morning I was amazed at the number of people riding bicycles, presumably to get to work. I’ve lived in two very bicycle friendly cities in the U.S. (Davis, California and Boulder, Colorado) but they’ve got nothing on Copenhagen. The city has a system of free bicycles available to anyone for use. Going somewhere? Grab a bicycle from a nearby rack and then upon your destination, return it to a local bicycle rack for someone else to use.

electric-powered hotel transport

A group of automobile manufacturers were promoting alternative fuel vehicles just outside the Bella Center entrance. Tuesday afternoon I was provided free transportation back to my hotel from an all electric-powered Mini Cooper. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to test out such a vehicle but discouraged to find that while the Mini is not yet in production, when it does go into production for the U.S. market they will make it larger to appeal to the American market. (Can they still call it the “Mini” then?) As a bonus the driver gave me a short driving tour of downtown Copenhagen – what a lovely city!

balloon containing one tonne of CO2

The city had clearly well prepared for the influx of people interested in climate issues by making very visible reminders of the impact of CO2 on the Earth. This photo of a large “balloon of CO2” is one of many stationed around the city. The photograph depicts visually the impact of one tonne of CO2. A very powerful image!

I write this from the airport, preparing to return to the GLOBE Program Office. I am excited to return home to share with everyone more details of my travel to the conference and to provide more information to the GLOBE community on how what I learned will help shape the GLOBE Student Climate Research Campaign. I want to extend thanks to the GPO staff for helping to ensure these blogs were posted in a timely manner and for posting other information from the conference to the SCRC web page.

I hope that the few entries I have posted provided you with an insiders’ glimpse to one of the largest international environmental conferences of our time. I will be monitoring the conference from home and asking others I know who are in attendance at the conference to provide some insights to share with all of you. Thank you for following my short journey. Please post any comments you might have, I would love to have a dialog with all of you!

The conference here is very large and as such there are many meetings and informational sessions that occur at the same time. It is difficult to select which talks to attend. I made an excellent choice, I think, yesterday in attending an update of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports. The IPCC was formed in 1988 and is comprised of hundreds of scientists who are experts in climate. They have issued four assessment reports, most recently in 2007.  There are four working groups within the IPCC and each working group issues a report. They also provide summaries for policy makers and other technical papers.

Yesterday I attended a session where the lead authors of the IPCC provided insight into how the results of the fourth report will be informing negotiations here at COP-15. They also provided a preview of the fifth report they have started work on. The session has been highlighted by news sources around the world (COP-15, BBC, Alijazeera).

The session began with the Chairman of the IPCC, Dr. Pachauri, addressing the breach of security at the University of East Anglia where emails of climate scientists (who are members of the IPCC) were stolen and distributed to the public. He reiterated his confidence in the science of the IPCC reports and process by which the results were derived. The fourth report of the IPCC included over 250 lead authors (can you imagine trying to complete a group project with that size team?!) and over 2,500 reviewers of the results.

The various working group reports of the fifth assessment are expected to be released in 2013 and 2014. New elements that will be included in the fifth assessment are an assessment of geoengineering. (Briefly in this context, geoengineering is a way to deal with through man-made design.) The next assessment will have a stronger focus on impacts of climate change. The report will focus on how to address the real threat of climate change. Some of the new areas that they will focus on include:
•    how impacts of climate change can be avoided, reduced or developed by mitigation
•    how increased adaptation to climate change can help reduce future vulnerability of people
•    an improved examination of regional impacts of climate change

The fifth assessment report is also expected to look at a broader range of ocean impacts as well as looking closely at weather extremes and disaster and the treatment of costs associated with those events. In the words of Dr. Field, the fifth report moves from making the point that climate change is real to “here is information you need to make good decisions” to adapt to the upcoming changes in climate.

The information the scientists provided was very interesting and the room had standing room only with people sitting on the floor in the aisles and standing outside the doors. Clearly, the attendees at the conference found this session important – I hope the brief insight I’ve shared helps you see the next steps a little more clearly as well.

The official capacity of the Bella Center is 15,000. I have heard estimates of up to 34,000 requests for accreditation to attend the conference. In fact they’ve stopped (possibly temporarily) issuing press passes because of the large number of attendees. There are also thousands of others who have decended upon the city of Copenhagen to be a part of history in the making. It is not surprising then that millions of people around the world are keeping track of the conference through virtual means like this blog.

Thanks to everyone for  reading my daily posts, including the folks at  the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) who are spreading the word on the CIRES Climate Literacy page.

A couple of other information sources you might want to check out include the official US web page that provides information on activities within the U.S. Center (some of which are simulcast virtually), and the soon to be up and running UCAR blog (GLOBE’s home institution) Currents.

Today is the second day of COP-15 and everyone seems to be hitting their stride. While new people are arriving each day, more of us know where we are going within this large conference center. I arrived early this morning in the morning twilight (sun rises around 08:25) when the city was bursting with energy. The energy level in the Bella Center is just as high. A group of young adults were working to raise awareness about CO2 and the rainforests by arranging themselves as trees and calling out to those of us headed to talks. (Of note there is not much in the way of protests near the Bella Center due, I suspect, to the high security and the pre-emptive law to discourage protesters.)

This morning I had the honor of representing GLOBE with a presentation in the U.S. Center space (shown here on left). I will post the presentation slides to the GLOBE web site. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most countries have space allocated for country-specific presentations and reception areas. I was fortunate to be scheduled to present in the reception area (below right)  which afforded more exposure because people were stopping by to see the U.S. Center. I distributed newly developed literature on the SCRC as well as our new GLOBE postcards.

I concluded the presentation by showing data from our new Earth System Science Poster on the NOAA Science on a Sphere. If you have never seen it, Science on a Sphere is amazing. It is a large sphere suspended from the ceiling. Four projectors display animated data onto the sphere. For my presentation, we displayed NEO data (NASA Earth Observations) of insolation, surface temperature, cloud fraction, precipitation, aerosols, and bioshpere. I was able to control the animations and the turning of the sphere with a Wii controller (yes, like the video game!).

This afternoon I attended a talk that focused on the IPCC fourth report and provided some insight in the upcoming fifth report that is currently underway. The fifth report is expected to be released in 2013. The energy here is amazing – thousands of people engaged in discussion around a central topic. The IPCC session was standing room only! Regardless of the topic, such synergy with so many people is an amazing thing to experience!

Tomorrow I will depart for home. Before I do I will make one more closing post from here in Copenhagen and then we’ll provide updates on the conference remotely. Until then, be strong and think science!

Today is the official opening of the conference.

There are a lot of meetings and presentations going on concurrently and so it is difficult to get a full sense of everything that is happening. This photo taken from one of the many halls within the Bella Center gives you a feel for the magnitude of this event.

The formal aspects of the meeting including things like adoption of the conference agenda, election of officers, and reports of various committees associated with the Conference of Parties. There are actually four formal meetings taking place here: Conference of Parties (COP), Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA), and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). As you can see there is a lot to keep track of. It’s not surprising that the meeting is usually just referred to as COP-15 rather than all of the above!

Today started with a Welcoming Ceremony after which the meetings of the four groups listed above began. At the same time these formal meetings occurred, many smaller presentations were given in many locations. Most countries in attendance have a designated space for which they can provide information and presentations. The photo here is a large space highlighting work of Denmark (the host of the conference).

Other countries have meeting space that is within different halls of the conference center. The United States has a presence for the first time ever! Tomorrow I will be presenting an overview of GLOBE and highlighting student research. I will also conduct a short overview of some of the NASA Earth Observatory data on Science On a Sphere. The imagery I will show is the same as on the soon-to-be-released Earth System Science Poster.

I spent much of today exploring the conference center and talking with many of the groups who are here to share their work on climate and climate change.

My discussions with many of them focused on how we can connect their work with that of the upcoming Student Climate Research Campaign (SCRC). The SCRC will not only provide new learning activities around climate, but help you make connections with local groups and organizations who are working on climate issues of local relevance to you.

Tomorrow is my presentation of all the great work GLOBE has been doing over the past 14+ years. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s report on the presentation and more updates on the conference.