Mastodawn

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Nov 30, 2023

Ruth Mottram Nov 30, 2023

We are going through the bounty and diversity of this planet in full knowledge of our actions - we see it all happen from #Space.

But #RemoteSensing can also play a role in enforcement #ParisAgreement. A call to arms:
" EO science must undergo a radical overhaul: it must become more user-oriented, collaborative, and transdisciplinary; span the range from fiducial to contextual data; and embrace new technologies for data analysis (e.g., artificial intelligence)."

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2022.941490/full

Space-based Earth observation in support of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement

Space-based Earth observation (EO), in the form of long-term climate data records, has been crucial in the monitoring and quantification of slow changes in the climate system—from accumulating greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, increasing surface temperatures, and melting sea-ice, glaciers and ice sheets, to rising sea-level. In addition to documenting a changing climate, EO is needed for effective policy making, implementation and monitoring, and ultimately to measure progress and achievements towards the overarching goals of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement to combat climate change. The best approach for translating EO into actionable information for policymakers and other stakeholders is, however, far from clear. For example, climate change is now self-evident through increasingly intense and frequent extreme events—heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and flooding—costing human lives and significant economic damage, even though single events do not constitute “climate”. EO can capture and visualize the impacts of such events in single images, and thus help quantify and ultimately manage them within the framework of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement, both at the national level (via the Enhanced Transparency Framework) and global level (via the Global Stocktake). We present a transdisciplinary perspective, across policy and science, and also theory and practice, that sheds light on the potential of EO to inform mitigation, in...

Frontiers

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Nov 13, 2023

John Carlos Baez Nov 13, 2023

Some news! I'm now helping lead a new Fields Institute program on the mathematics of climate change.

You may have heard of the Fields Medal, one of the most prestigious math prizes. But the Fields Institute, in Toronto, holds a lot of meetings on mathematics. So when COVID hit, it was a big problem. The director of the institute, Kumar Murty, decided to steer into the wind and set up a network of institutions working on COVID, including projects on the mathematics of infectious disease and systemic risks. This worked well, so now he wants to start a project on the mathematics of climate change. Nathaniel Osgood and I are leading it.

Nate, as I call him, is a good friend and collaborator. He's a computer scientist at the University of Saskatchewan and, among other things, an expert on epidemiology who helped lead COVID modeling for Canada. We're currently using category theory to develop a better framework for agent-based models.

Nate and I plan to focus the Fields Institute project not on the geophysics of climate change — e.g., trying to predict how bad global warming will be — but the human response to it — that is, figuring out what we should do! This project will be part of the Fields Institute's Centre for Sustainable Development:

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/centres/centre-sustainable-development.

I'll have a lot more to say about this. But for now, let me just say: I'm very excited to have this opportunity! Mathematics may not be the *main* thing we need to battle climate change, but there are important things in this realm that can only be done with the help of math. A lot of mathematicians, computer scientists, and others with quantitative skills want to do something about climate change. I aim to help them do it.

Centre for Sustainable Development

The Centre for Sustainable Development brings together research activity in areas such as smart villages, smart communities, climate risk, Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) investing and other themes related to sustainability. The Centre draws on the mathematical strength of the Fields community as well as partnerships with a diverse collection of organizations who are involved and interested in the sustainability problem overall.

Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Oct 26, 2023

T. Emil Rivera-Thorsen Oct 26, 2023

Deadline for #JWST propsals 10 minutes ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnT7pT6zCcA

Ode To Joy | Muppet Music Video | The Muppets

YouTube

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Oct 2, 2023

Jeff Jarvis Oct 2, 2023

This could not be more deserved:
Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to scientists who laid foundation for messenger RNA vaccines https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/10/02/nobel-prize-medicine/

Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to scientists who laid foundation for messenger RNA vaccines

The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, scientists who worked together to turn messenger RNA from a fragile genetic material that triggered a problematic immune response into a powerful medicine. Their key breakthrough in 2005 went largely unnoticed, but is now the backbone of two leading coronavirus vaccines and could lead to a whole new class of vaccines and drugs.

The Washington Post

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Sep 19, 2023

Joanna Holman Sep 19, 2023

I know I've mentioned this before but worth another one because it's amazing: You can download tens of thousands of academic books on a staggering variety of humanities and social studies topics legally for free at the OAPEN library https://library.oapen.org/

#books

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Sep 19, 2023

MU-Peter Shimon 🀄Sep 19, 2023

Hapalosiphonacean cyanobacteria (Nostocales) thrived amid emerging embryophytes in an early Devonian (407-million-year-old) landscape
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(23)01415-3

Shows accommodation to terrestrial ecosystems was well underway more than 400 million years ago.

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Sep 9, 2023

Julia Sloan explains the challenges of making the components of CliMA's Earth System Model (air, land, sea, ice, etc., as shown) work together. In short, each component must implement methods of a simple interface. Multiple dispatch and ClimaCoupler handle the rest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnw_BI2tRaA&list=PLP8iPy9hna6T7PRe2sucSonFsrrH-oEZC&index=60&pp=iAQB #julialang #juliacon #climate #clima

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Sep 8, 2023

Skylar Gering discusses SubZero.jl, a package to simulate ice flows which is soon to be released. Shown are two simulations. One, on the right, contains 4 islands which are missing on the left. Despite being barely visible they clearly obstruct flow. The islands are present on the real Earth. #julialang #juliacon #climate

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Sep 8, 2023

Simon Byrne, CliMA lead programmer, discusses extending Julia's broadcast operator for best performance of Earth system models on GPU clusters. I imagine, or perhaps hope, this is another emerging design pattern for climate modeling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c5oHS1865U&list=PLP8iPy9hna6T7PRe2sucSonFsrrH-oEZC&index=63&pp=iAQB

#julialang, #climate, #juliacon

W. Bauer (wilcrofter)Sep 7, 2023

All or most videos from JuliaCon 2023 are now available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP8iPy9hna6T7PRe2sucSonFsrrH-oEZC).

The image is from a talk by Gregory Wagner, author of Oceananigans. It shows what may become a dominant design idea in CliMA. It shows the connection between customizible fields in a model constructor and the terms of the PDE on which the model is based. #climate #julia #julialang

The 10th annual JuliaCon, 2023

YouTube