Obama on U.S.-India Agriculture Research

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Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced a new era of collaboration on agricultural research in the face of climate change. In fact, efforts have been underway since 2009: the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) has been working for the past two years with India’s Ministry of Agriculture and other institutions to improve forecasts of the seasonal monsoon rains that water much of the nation’s farms, and to help farmers manage drought.

“Cooperation between Indian and American researchers and scientists sparked the Green Revolution,” said Obama during a Nov. 8 joint session of India’s Parliament in New Delhi. “Now, as farmers and rural areas face the effects of climate change and drought, we’ll work together to spark a second, more sustainable Evergreen Revolution.” He and Singh later issued a joint pledge to pursue initiatives on clean energy, health and jobs, as well as agriculture and climate.

Shiv Someshwar, director of the IRI’s Asia and Pacific regional program, said that the two leaders “sent a clear signal that scientific and technological advancements in managing weather and climate risks are critical for making rural communities more resilient. The dual emphasis on better climate prediction and its uptake by farmers and policy makers is exactly right. The IRI’s work with Indian partners over the past two years has been built on this very premise.”

More than 60 percent of farmland in India lacks irrigation, and thus depends on monsoonal rains, which come roughly from late May to early October. A failed monsoon often means complete loss of a crop, and even below-average rainfall often results in increased food prices and hurts economic growth. The government spends massive sums on drought relief–according to the agriculture ministry, about $5 billion during the last major drought, in 2002. A lesser, but still damaging, drought took place in 2009.

These costs have sparked interest in identifying ways to plan ahead, particularly as concern grows over the potential for climate change to affect monsoon cycles. IRI’s effort is funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and India’s Ministry of Agriculture, which together plan to issue detailed forecasts to farmers starting in the 2011 rainy monsoon season. The IRI project, known as the Extended Range Forecast System for Climate Risk Management in Agriculture, is aimed not only improving the forecasts, but helping farmers and policy makers prepare early for adverse conditions. In addition to conducting field-based research, IRI has co-hosted training events in India and sponsored Indian scientists for research visits to the United States to improve their forecasting and risk-management abilities. Partners include the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; India Meteorological Department; National Center for Medium-Range Forecasting; Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and a number of state agricultural universities. For full details, visit the project home page or download this flyer.

Below are Obama’s remarks about agriculture. (The entire transcript of his speech is here):

Together, we can strengthen agriculture. Cooperation between Indian and American researchers and scientists sparked the Green Revolution. Today, India is a leader in using technology to empower farmers, like those I met yesterday who get free updates on market and weather conditions on their cell phones. And the United States is a leader in agricultural productivity and research. Now, as farmers and rural areas face the effects of climate change and drought, we’ll work together to spark a second, more sustainable Evergreen Revolution

Together, we’re improving Indian weather forecasting systems before the next monsoon season. We aim to help millions of Indian farmers — farming households save water and increase productivity, improve food processing so crops don’t spoil on the way to market, and enhance climate and crop forecasting to avoid losses that cripple communities and drive up food prices.

And as part of our food security initiative, we’re going to share India’s expertise with farmers in Africa. And this is an indication of India’s rise — that we can now export hard-earned expertise to countries that see India as a model for agricultural development. It’s another powerful example of how American and Indian partnership can address an urgent global challenge.

A better understanding of future climate in the Sahel

I am very happy to report that my colleague, Alessandra Giannini, a research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, has been awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award to advance our understanding of climate model projections in the African Sahel, a semi-arid region south of the Sahara Desert that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

[I also shot a quick video interview with Ale. Had much fun with it. I used our trusty Kodak zi8 HD record with a lapel mic. The interview part took about an hour, and then I used iMovie to edit a better-than-rough cut in about 3 hours. IRI's design guru, Jason, added the final polish. Click on the embedded movie to listen to Ale discuss her work, as well as her thoughts on becoming a scientist. Now for the rest of the story...]

The Faculty Early Career Development Program, known as CAREER, is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for junior professors that are exemplary “teacher-scholars” who can integrate education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

At the heart of Giannini’s research is a quest to understand why 21st century climate-change projections diverge in the Sahel and other parts of the developing world.

“Anthropogenic climate change is expected to affect less-developed societies with greater severity, yet it’s in the tropics, where these societies are located, that projections of change, especially of changes in regional rainfall, have the greatest uncertainty” , says Giannini.

The global models that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses in its assessments are inconsistent for the Sahel. Some of the models project the region to become wetter than it is currently, while others project it to be dryer, she says. “Having a better grasp of the situation is critical, because this region is highly vulnerable to rainfall variability and change.”

In the 1970s and 80s, the Sahel suffered from devastating droughts and famines that killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced hundreds of thousands to migrate elsewhere. Giannini and her colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and at Texas A&M University conclusively demonstrated that those droughts could have been caused not by deforestation and land-use change, but by changes in global ocean temperatures. They published their results in the journal Science in 2003.

The CAREER award will fund Giannini’s work for five years, and includes support for a doctoral student in climate science. In their research, Giannini and the student will analyze output from global models that diverge in order to try to identify any mechanisms attributable to natural variability, land use change or global warming. They will then look for the ‘fingerprints’ of such mechanisms in actual observations of the Earth’s atmosphere collected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Mobile Facility (AMF) in Niamey, Niger – in the heart of the Sahel. The AMF is a portable laboratory equipped with a suite of instruments designed to collect data on clouds and other components of the atmosphere. Finally, they will test sensitivity in the models’ behavior to such mechanisms with carefully crafted simulations.

Reaching out to the Columbia Community

Giannini’s CAREER award also funds a particularly interesting educational component. She will be working with Columbia’s Institute of African Studies to develop lessons and materials that benefit community organizations and public schools in Harlem, a historically African-American neighborhood near Columbia University with a sizable immigrant population from West African countries such as Senegal and Mali. Her aim is to teach climate-change science to high-school students from an environmental justice perspective, using air pollution as a way to connect local and global issues.

“I applaud Dr. Giannini’s willingness to share knowledge, broaden connections between people and ideas and create opportunities for participatory growth,” says Mamadou Diouf, the director of the Institute of African Studies.

Giannini wants to open up dialogue with immigrant community organizations in Harlem to share perspectives on climate change and its impacts. “Of great interest to me is to understand how they understand and explain drought, which may have ultimately led them to leave their countries. It’s a mutual education – reaching a common understanding can help the IRI build projects in the region so it and its partners can act in the best informed way possible, with local support, to help avert the worst consequences of future change.”

Immigrants routinely contribute to the survival of their communities of origin through remittances. Ultimately, Giannini hopes that scientific knowledge will empower them to learn from the past in order to shape a different future – a future that confronts head-on the same problems of poverty eradication and sustainable development that form the core of the mission of the IRI.

Permalink for this story: http://iri.columbia.edu/features/2010/iri_scientist_wins_nsf_career_award.html

Report on Climate Prediction

A report recently released by the National Research Council called “Assessment of Intraseasonal to Interannual Climate Prediction and Predictability” examines the current state of medium-term climate forecasting–over time periods of a few weeks to a few years. It makes suggestions on how these forecasts might be improved.

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society is among a number of institutions that regularly produce climate predictions, such as seasonal or longer-term rainfall and temperature forecasts. These institutions, the report states, could increase the value of such products to decision makers by improving the procedures for archiving and disseminating the information. In addition, the report concludes that making advances in observational capabilities, statistical and dynamical models and data assimilation systems could improve our understanding of key climate processes, as well as improve the forecasts themselves.

IRI research scientist Lisa Goddard was on the committee that wrote the report. In a brief Q&A below, she discusses the publication and some of its key recommendations.

Q: First, why is such a report necessary?

LG: The report was primarily commissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which wanted an assessment of the current capabilities in seasonal prediction and what additional efforts might improve the quality of forecast information. We know we have some skill in predicting the climate on intraseasonal-to-interannual time scales. For the United States, much of this skill is realized during El Niño or La Niña events. In order to improve our skill, we would not only need better models, but more complete observing systems, as well as better techniques for inserting those observations into the models’ initial conditions for prediction. There are other aspects of the climate system that may influence the climate on these time scales, such as the stratosphere or land-atmosphere interactions. These will require much more research, observations, and modeling before the operational community can quantify their impact on intraseasonal-to-interannual predictions.

However, we wrote the report with a broader audience in mind. We included sections on the history of prediction, on how forecasts are made, plus the extensive observations, scientific research and operational efforts required to develop, improve and communicate these forecasts.

Q: The report recommends some “best practices” for improving the utility and accessibility of forecasts to researchers and decision makers. What are the major impediments that prevent the uptake of this information by these groups currently? Is there one best practice that stands out from the rest in your opinion?

LG: In my opinion, creating publicly-available archives of information associated with forecasts is paramount. IRI’s experience is that the needs of researchers, decision makers and others who would use climate forecasts, or the model predictions on which they are based, are too diverse and difficult for any operational center to address thoroughly. So making available the data from the models and the observations, as well as what considerations went into the issued forecasts is very important. It allows different communities to tailor or assess the information in ways that are more consistent with their decision processes or risk thresholds.

Q: The report also lays out some key research questions that need addressing if we are to improve our forecasts. Which of these intersect directly with your work and why are they important to answer?

LG: The focus of my research is on how to make the best use of available prediction information, especially to those who might be able to act on that information. This is related to the report’s recommendations on improving the development and understanding of multi-model ensemble prediction and merging statistical and dynamical techniques

I think this is an important issue because models are still deficient when it comes to representing some of the characteristics of the climate and its variability. These deficiencies aren’t necessarily the same from one model to the next. The better the models and their use of observations become, the more robust the data I have to plug into my own research. So the key research questions that others throughout the climate community are addressing to improve forecasts also intersect directly with my work.

Permalink for this story: http://iri.columbia.edu/features/2010/new_report_state_of_climate_prediction.html

• The full report can be downloaded for free from National Academies Press.
• IRI’s Climate Diagnostics page
• IRI’s resource page for El Niño or La Niña

What is climate risk management?

The second installment of a three-part series we’re running over at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society web site. IRI Director-General, Stephen Zebiak, gets into more detail on defining climate risk management.

Once we’ve identified the best technologies and practices, the fourth and final step is finding the “real world” arrangements that enable their implementation. Using the example of an early-warning system for food crises, we can ask: What are the actual mechanisms to have in place for hunger relief? Who are the key decision makers to identify? What specific types of climate information do they need in order to take action and who will supply it? How do we make this sustainable?

The fact that climate risk management can be effective doesn’t make it easy. Because the process is inherently interdisciplinary, it requires a detailed understanding of complex, context-specific interactions between physical, natural and social systems. It also involves collaboration among experts who must work together on cross-disciplinary problems. Although developing the proper strategies is a complicated task, climate risk management can be applied to agricultural, water, health or any other sector, on spatial scales that range from local to global, and on time scales from near- to long-term.

Read the entire piece on the IRI web site.

Photo: Indonesia food market. Francesco Fiondella/IRI.

Managing Risk in a Changing Climate: Making the Case

In the first of a three-part series, IRI’s Director-General, Stephen Zebiak, makes the case for climate-risk management as an approach for dealing with droughts, floods, epidemics and other problems that plague society and hinder development. This approach, if applied correctly, would also be an effective adaptation strategy to climate change.

Climate shocks in the form of droughts, floods, cyclones, and related problems such as epidemics, food insecurity and infrastructure loss have been playing out throughout recorded history, but with increasing severity as populations become increasingly vulnerable. A growing body of evidence, much of it captured in the 2007-2008 Human Development Report by the United Nations, points to the direct effects of climate on economic and human development, particularly in low-income countries. Scan the headlines of recent weeks, and you’ll undoubtedly come across stories about the ongoing food crisis in Niger caused by irregular rainfall, which threatens the lives and well being of at least seven million people. You’ll see pictures from the extremely harsh winter in Mongolia, which wiped out nearly 20% of the country’s livestock, leading to food shortages and loss of livelihood for tens of thousands of families. You’ll read about how hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors in Haiti are still living in relief camps and other temporary structures, under threat of a hurricane season forecasted to be unusually active. The ability to cope better with climate is thus a paramount issue of the present, and a potentially even greater issue in the foreseeable future. We need ‘win-win’ approaches to better manage current climate risks and to build capability to cope with the climate of the future.

The work needed to provide problem-specific information and to advance innovations in the use of such information is the science of climate risk management practice. Put simply, climate risk management is the process of climate-informed decision-making. It involves the use of strategies that reduce uncertainty through the systematic use of climate information. This work is especially challenging because it involves a complex interplay between physical, natural, and social systems and requires that practitioners engage with good science, good policy, and good practice. At present there are some organizations working to connect these disparate disciplines — but while their work has provided examples of practical ways to manage climate risk, the demand for useable knowledge and information far outstrips what can be provided.

Read the entire piece on the IRI web site.

Photo: Pétionville camp for displaced Haitians. Eric Holthaus/IRI.

Active Hurricane Season Predicted

Eric Holthaus, a colleague at the IRI, has written a nice piece on the latest, troubling hurricane forecasts for the Atlantic region. First few grafs below..

The Atlantic hurricane season has officially started, and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society has issued its updated seasonal hurricane forecast for the region. The results continue to indicate that an above-normal season is very likely. This could spell trouble for highly vulnerable Caribbean nations such as Haiti, still reeling from the effects of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12, 2010. On top of this, other forecasts point to increased thunderstorm activity for the region as well.

The IRI’s hurricane forecast probabilities are the strongest the institution has ever issued at this point in the season, eclipsed only by a late-season forecast during record-setting 2005. The latest numbers call for a 50% chance of above-normal activity, 35% chance of near-normal activity and a 15% chance for below-normal activity. Put in simpler terms, this means that the chance of having an above-normal year is more than three times the chance of having a below-normal one.

The hurricane forecast issued last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is even stronger, calling for an 85% chance of an above-normal season.

Full story: http://iri.columbia.edu/features/2010/an_active_hurricane_season_predicted.html

Caption: Above-normal temperatures in the North Atlantic are strongly influencing recent forecasts that call for a robust 2010 hurricane season. Map courtesy of NOAA.

Climate and Public-Health communities: together again

For the third year in a row, public-health professionals and climate scientists from around the world are visiting Columbia University’s Lamont campus, where the International Research Institute for Climate and Society is based, to learn how to use climate information to make better decisions for health-care planning and disease prevention. They’re taking part in the third Summer Institute on Climate Information for Public Health, organized by IRI, in partnership with the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

World leaders have grown increasingly concerned with finding ways to adapt to climate change and climate variability, which threatens the stability of many facets of life, such as energy, food, and water. Climate also affects the fundamental requirements for good health. The public health community recognizes the need to better understand climate’s role as a driver of infectious diseases such as malaria and meningitis, as well as its potential to change the geographic distribution of disease.

“Droughts, floods, changing rainfall and temperature patterns-these all can have severe impacts on public health, especially in developing countries,” says senior research scientist Madeleine Thomson. “They also often disrupt food production and limit access to safe drinking water, which in turn can make people sick and undernourished,” she says.

By understanding climate, its associated impacts and its potential predictability, decision makers can start responding proactively. “The IRI has its roots in strong climate science, with a goal to enhance society’s ability to understand and manage climate-related risks. That’s why we’re excited to again host a summer institute, bringing together a talented group of participants and our expert staff to explore the most effective ways to use climate information in decision making,” Thomson says.

Read the full story at the IRI web site.

Tackling Climate Threats to Food Security

Latest news from the IRI:

A new multimillion dollar research program by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research aims to alleviate climate-related threats to the food security, livelihoods and environment of people living in the developing world. One of the key intellectual forces behind this initiative has been the International Research Institute for Climate and Society’s Jim Hansen. He’ll be leading efforts within the program to look at how managing current climate risks will help farming communities adapt to longer term climate change.

The CGIAR– a network of agricultural research centers that supports thousands of scientists in more than 100 countries– considers climate change an “immediate and unprecedented threat” to the food security of hundreds of millions of people who depend on small-scale agriculture and natural resource management. To address this threat, it has created a ten-year Challenge Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) [pronounced SEE-cafs] to explore new ways of helping vulnerable communities adjust to global changes in climate as they relate to food security. The program’s annual budget is expected to ramp up to $25 million by its fifth year.

Hansen, an expert on climate risk management for agriculture, sees the new program as a way to foster collaboration between people concerned with climate change adaptation and those concerned with development.

“Climate-related risk is a major contributor to poverty and food insecurity, and an impediment to agricultural development efforts, particularly in rain-fed farming systems in the dryer tropics,” he says. “Well-designed, well-targeted research, in the context of an international development strategy, can have a huge impact.” And with CCAFS, he will have an opportunity to shape a program of high-impact research.

Read the rest of the story here.

Photo: Francesco Fiondella