From Bruce Riordan, at the Climate Readiness Institute.
Bay Area Climate Stakeholders: Governor Brown's new Executive Order, issued today is a banner day for our climate change efforts.
1. The Executive Order sets a new interim goal for GHG reduction—40% below 1990 levels by 2030.
2. The Executive Order, for the first time, outlines a series of steps the State will take to address climate adaptation and resilience.
See the press release, reaction from world leaders, and the full Executive Order at: http://gov.ca.gov/home.php
Yesterday the White House launched the second phase of the Climate Data Initiative, focused on leveraging climate data and innovation to make food systems more resilient to climate change and reduce the impact of agriculture on climate change. We are delighted to have a range of Administration announcements and private sector commitments that came together for today’s news.
Here is a fact sheet describing what they are announcing today: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/07/29/fact-sheet-empowering-america-s-agricultural-sector-and-strengthening-fo
And here’s a blog from White House Science Advisor John Holdren and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on the launch: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/29/unleashing-climate-data-empower-america-s-agricultural-sector
Please share these widely with your partners and networks. Thanks for your support for the initiative and your commitment to acting on climate change!
Following the President’s call for developing tools for climate resilience, NEX is hosting a workshop that will feature:
- Climate science through lectures by experts;
- Computational tools through virtual labs; and
- A challenge inviting participants to compete for prizes by designing and implementing solutions for climate resilience.
An particularly exciting part of this initiative is the possibility to win cash prizes for innovative research ideas. You can find more information about labs and lectures here at https://nex.nasa.gov/opennex
and to participate in the challenge, you can go directly at https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9933584.
Pay attention! Especially grad students and young researchers! The first part of the challenge is the ideation challenge which will close on the 31st of July, 2014 and will follow up with another solvers challenge based on the ideas as selected form the ideation challenge. This will run through October so ample time to participate and win prizes.
The President’s Climate Data Initiative was launched March 18th with the tagline: Empowering America’s Communities to Prepare for the Effects of Climate Change. The initiative is a complex partnership of government, industry, academia and local initatives to get the US ready for climate change. The overall goal of the climate data initiative is "Spark Innovation": release data, articulate challenges, turn data scientists loose.
We saw some very interesting short talks from a range of speakers. Here are some highlights:
Jack Dangermond highlighted the many initiatives that ESRI is pushing to help with climate resilience. Kathyrn Sullivan from NOAA discussed her concept of "Environmental Intelligence", which describes the use of data to create resilience. She says: "NOAA capture 20TB daily, they release 2TB daily. Upon that data stream are built all the climate businesses we have today. What would this industry be like if we release the other 18TB?" Ellen Stofan from NASA talked about new earth observation missions, including satellites for precipitation, soil moisture, CO2, winds, aerosols. She announced another "data driven challenge" called "coastal inundation in your community". Rachel Kyte from the World Bank called their multiple initiatives "Open Data for Resilience". She said that climate change may eradicate the mission of the World Bank, because of its disproportionate impact on poorer communities worldwide. Rebecca More from Google gave us a fantastic overview of the Landsat, climate and topography missions that Google Earth Engine is working on.
Here are some press links:
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/19/climate-data-initiative-launches-strong-public-and-private-sector-commitments
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/19/fact-sheet-president-s-climate-data-initiative-empowering-america-s-comm
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/03/19/wh-launches-new-climate-data-initiative-wednesday/
