by Dr. Donna Charlevoix, GPO Climate Research Campaign Coordinator
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!
