AMNH biobulletin on peatland fires

The Science Bulletins crew at the American Museum of Natural History has created brief but excellent feature about the work the International Research Institute for Climate and Society is doing in Central Kalimantan (see an earlier post for a description of that work). The piece really connects the way in which satellite and remotely-sensed data can be used to inform decision making for societally relevant issues. The AMNH became interested after viewing the audio slideshow below, which we put together after our trip to the region last year.

Reducing Indonesia’s Peatland Fires from IRI Video Pages on Vimeo.

IPCC Chief Rajendra Pachauri new IRI Board Chairman

Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has agreed to serve as the next board chairman of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

“I think there’s so much that the IRI can do. Climate change gives us an opportunity to reengage with rest of world and the IRI is uniquely placed to do that,” Pachauri said during IRI’s board meeting last week, the first in which he served as chairman.

Columbia University hosted a small event commemorating Pachauri’s new role in the institution, as well as honoring outgoing chairman and respected climate scientist Michael B. McElroy, from Harvard University.

“We are very appreciative of Mike’s support and counsel, which have helped build the institution from its infancy to where it is today,” said IRI Director-General Stephen E. Zebiak. “And we are both excited and honored to welcome Dr. Pachauri as our board chair. He’s a recognized global leader in climate affairs, and will assist us in engaging the growing international agenda on adaptation and climate risk management.”

The Earth Institute’s Jeffrey Sachs, also an IRI board member, praised the IRI’s mission, which is to enhance society’s ability to understand, anticipate and manage climate risk in order to improve human welfare.

“The IRI was 13 years ahead of its time in seeing the importance of linking climate and society,” he said. “The world is catching up now. Climate-change adaptation is front and center, and no other institution in the world has pioneered this field with such depth and skill.”

Visit the IRI’s Governance pages to learn more about the institution’s board and its role.

Photo: Francesco Fiondella

visual communication + science

I have been asked to give a brownbag seminar on using visuals to communicate science at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. Should make for an interesting discussion. As I go about researching the talk, I’m sure I’ll find some excellent resources on information graphics, visual communication and design, which I’ll post on my tumblr site Communicating Science.
 
Please feel to use the comments section here to share any good links you’ve come across.

Posted via email from communicating science

Climate and coconuts – a Sri Lanka story

Millions of people in the tropics depend on coconuts for food, raw materials and liveli-hood. They are a high value commercial crop. But like any crop, coconuts are at risk of drought and other prolonged events. By using climate science and better agricultural forecast models, the IRI has helped increase the resilience of coconut plantations to climate variability in one of the world’s major producers, Sri Lanka.

The full story is available on the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) web site.

IRI’s first Q&A

We just kicked off a new series on our home page. Over the next year, I’ll be interviewing many of the luminaries that pass through our halls here at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. My goal is to give a big picture perspective from big thinkers in the field of climate risk management and adaptation. Rather than write a full story, I’ll post Q&As, which I think can be effective tools for time-strapped science communicators. I also think serve as good resources for journalists, because the content is primary–straight from the scientists’ mouths.

Here’s an excerpt from my interview with Graeme Hammer…

It isn’t the climate forecast, stupid!

Information graphics + science = Communication

For my current job, I’m mostly a writer, sometimes a graphics designer and occasional photographer. I don’t get many opportunities these days to create information graphics, so it’s always a treat when I get to help one of our scientists communicate through visual information.

Here’s a chart that a colleague made and used many times to illustrate the relationship between rainfall anomalies (an anomaly is the difference from the average) and occurrence of peatland fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.

My main issue with the chart is the confusing double axis and the overuse of loud colors. The eye is constantly forced to consult the legend to figure out what is being shown. The point we want to make with this graphic is: drier-than-normal years have an influence on fire activity. With this in mind, I made this version:

We’ve helped this chart out heaps just by teasing apart the two data sets onto separate axes. Alternating vertical bands help the eye follow the data across different years. And to really hit the point home, I added the circles and dark text.

I also tinkered on the wonderful Many Eyes site to show the data in a slightly different configuration:

This scatter plot shows the hotspot densities as circles of different sizes, which enables one to see immediately that most of the larger circles are tied to negative (drier) rainfall anomalies. If I could customize the chart further, I’d fiddle with the y-axis and change the awful intervals (where’s the zero line?)

What do you think?

Audio slideshow about Ethiopia’s water resources

My colleague Jason and I put together an audio slideshow about an IRI scientist’s trip to Ethiopia. The scientist, Paul Block, is trying to help he country better manage its scant water resources. He came back with a nice collection of photos for us to sift through and frame out a story. We sat him down in front of our trusty Edirol digital recorder (pictured in the “reporter’s toolkit” section to the right) and had him narrate the piece. We were lucky in that Paul can speak quite eloquently off-the-cuff, so the whole thing took only a few tries.

In areas where Paul didn’t have appropriate photos to tie in with what he was saying, we went to outside sources, including Flickr. NGOs and universities also usually make many images freely available. Click on the image to view the slideshow. Hope you enjoy, and as always, feedback is appreciated.

IRI at COP14 in Poznan

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society’s participation at this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP14) in Poznan, Poland centers around two side events that highlight the importance of climate risk management for adaptation. One is on index insurance, the other is on using climate information to help prevent humanitarian disasters

Read more on the IRI news page.

[Image from COP14/Poznan 2008 gallery]