The recent firings at NCAR in the area of social sciences (see) highlights a conflict between those who have concluded that a top-down global climate model perspective provides more useful information to policymakers than does a bottom-up resource-based vulnerability perspective. The bottom-up perspective, however, is more inclusive and useful to policy makers. For example, see
Pielke, R.A. Sr., 2004: Discussion Forum: A broader perspective on climate change is needed. IGBP Newsletter, 59, 16-19
which is based on the detailed review in the book
Kabat, P., Claussen, M., Dirmeyer, P.A., J.H.C. Gash, L. Bravo de Guenni, M. Meybeck, R.A. Pielke Sr., C.J. Vorosmarty, R.W.A. Hutjes, and S. Lutkemeier, Editors, 2004: Vegetation, water, humans and the climate: A new perspective on an interactive system. Springer, Berlin, Global Change - The IGBP Series, 566 pp.
Dr. Richard Anthes, UCAR President, recently published an article in the President’s Corner in the UCAR Quaterly entitled Mitigate and adapt—but don’t forget the science!
This article documents that the UCAR President (who oversees NCAR) is a strong advocate of the top-down perspective and wants significant additional funding for this. Several excerpts from the article are
“In spite of remarkable progress over the past several decades, our understanding of the complex physical, chemical, and biological Earth system and its interactions with humans remains, on many levels, rudimentary. We’ve identified many research questions where there is more that we don’t know than we do. And there are certainly still more questions we don’t yet even know we should be asking. Even the feedbacks in the Earth system that we recognize as important in a qualitative way are just beginning to be understood in quantitative ways that can be included in weather, climate, and Earth system models. “
“In order to monitor, understand, predict, and adapt to climate change—including the all-important changes in extreme and impactful weather on local and regional scales, where it really counts—we have a long way to go. Now more than ever, we need better Earth observations, increased computer power to process the observations and run the models, improved weather and climate predictions, and enhanced research on how weather and climate affect social order and life on the planet.”
“Calls for more funding are a familiar aspect of science. What many observers may not realize is that, in recent years, the nation’s investments in the key areas listed above have been decreasing in real dollars.”
“There is also no substitute for computing power to understand and predict weather and climate. Larger and faster computers allow scientists to effectively combine the suite of diverse global observations into a meaningful whole and to make predictions and warnings with increasing accuracy and detail for local areas. Ever more powerful computers will be needed to build and run Earth system models that contain biological and chemical processes and human interactions. These advanced models will be essential tools in both understanding and predicting climate change and in societal demands for information. Yet computing power at major climate modeling centers such as NCAR is increasing in a business-as-usual way that does not reflect the importance of the science and the need for vastly improved decision support tools related to climate and weather.”
“Beyond the intellectual challenges they pose, climate and weather changes stand to affect almost every part of our society: public health and safety, economic and social stability, agriculture, water supplies and management, energy production and use, transportation, and military readiness. In each of these areas, policy- and decision makers are clamoring for concrete guidance on what to expect as our climate and weather evolve and how to adapt to changes. For example:
- What kinds of crops are best suited to hotter, more drought-prone areas?
- How might rising sea level, intensified rainfall, and changes in hurricanes affect cities along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts?
- How long will it take for the Arctic Ocean to experience ice-free conditions in summer?
- How will energy and water demands and supplies change in my city, state, or region?”
“In addressing these and other key questions, scientists must provide quantitative as well as qualitative information at increasingly regional and local scales. We need to work with users to understand what might happen, what will almost certainly happen, and where the science has yet to support firm conclusions. With increased computing and modeling power, we can expand the type of ensemble climate modeling systems that are beginning to tackle questions on the regional level, such as:
- What scenarios are possible? Most likely?
- What are the worst and best cases?
- What are the probabilities of the different scenarios?
- How can we quantify the risks associated with various contemplated courses of action?”
“Our current ideas on how to deal with climate change rest on a scientific foundation that remains only partially built. Especially when it comes to large-scale mitigation efforts, we may know just enough to be dangerous. People will inevitably make choices based on today’s far-from-complete scientific knowledge (society cannot stand still while we do our work), but we must learn more.”
“Enhanced observations of Earth are needed to validate and improve climate models, support more accurate and precise predictions, confirm or deny these predictions, and detect surprises. Physical as well as social scientists must listen to stakeholders, map out our vulnerabilities to extreme weather, and learn how to increase society’s flexibility and resilience in the face of a climate never before experienced by humans. And we must develop the advanced models that can greatly improve our forecasting and warning systems and sharpen our look into the future.”
“Will we as a community be able to meet these national needs? As a result of budget battles between the White House and Congress, federal funding for climate, weather, and other Earth science research at NASA, NOAA, and NSF will drop in real terms this year—for the fourth year in a row—while our ability to monitor Earth’s vital signs begins to decline.”
“Future leaders in the White House and Congress will be forced to juggle many priorities. If climate change ranks among the top threats facing our planet, as I and many others believe, then it seems imperative that we invest in observing, understanding, and predicting our climate at a level commensurate with the risk we face, while at the same time carrying out unprecedented mitigation and adaptation efforts on a local, national, and global basis.”
Anthes statement that
“…climate and weather changes stand to affect almost every part of our society: public health and safety, economic and social stability, agriculture, water supplies and management, energy production and use, transportation, and military readiness. In each of these areas, policy- and decision makers are clamoring for concrete guidance on what to expect as our climate and weather evolve and how to adapt to changes’
illustrate the top-down focus that he espouses in that he assumes
“policy- and decision makers are clamoring for concrete guidance”
and that
“Larger and faster computers allow scientists to effectively combine the suite of diverse global observations into a meaningful whole and to make predictions and warnings with increasing accuracy and detail for local areas.”
His statement that
“Physical as well as social scientists must listen to stakeholders, map out our vulnerabilities to extreme weather,…”
reflects his view that the global climate models [downscaled to local areas] provide “forecasts” to the “stakeholders” who then determine their vulnerabilties to these predictions. This, however, continues to make the modeling community the driver of the assessment process rather than just one partner in the information used by the stakeholders! The reliance on the multi-decadal global models to predict future climate also seriously limits the range of the assessment of consequences to society and the environment to what actually will occur in the coming decades, since we know these global models are still inadequate, as even Anthes has admitted in his article and as seen in real world data (e.g. see)!
Climate Science, in contrast, has recommended an inversion of the focus where the first step is to identify local and regional vulnerabilities to key resources (e.g. food, energy, water) to determine the magnitude of changes in climate and other environmental conditions that would result in a negative effect on these essential resources. We do not need a global climate model prediction to do this! Rather, we need the involvement of the social science community, which NCAR, under the direction of Rick Anthes, has elected to cut.
This was a short sighted decision which is clearly based on focusing funds in order to support greater computing and observational power. While Climate Science agrees that funds are needed to improve our understanding of the climate system on decadal time scales (the assessment of model predictability; the use of climate models and observations for process studies and diagnostic analyses; see), a significant amount of funds should be allocated for the assessment of societal and environmental vulnerabilities. NCAR’s (and UCAR’s) decision to cut the social science program at NCAR has removed an effective program to examine these vulnerabilities.