Washington DC | Dr. Crouthamel was invited by the USDA’s Associate Administrator For Risk Management, Barbara Leach, to participate in the Seventh Annual Cyber Security Symposium and Expo at the USDA headquarters in Washington. Dr. Crouthamel presented on behalf of IEDRO. Among the topics Dr. Crouthamel addressed, were weather data rescue and digitization’s impact on agriculture risk […]
climate change
IEDRO & WMO aim to rescue Uzbekistan’s historical weather data
October 21, 2014
Tashkent | Just two weeks ago, the flight of Randy McCracken and Teddy Allen touched down in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. The two worked alongside Uzhydromet and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to identify the scope and potential of rescuing the country’s historical weather data. Teddy Allen is Director of Scientific Applications for The […]
New greenhouse gases record set, WMO reiterates need for international action to avoid devastating climate change
September 9, 2014
GENEVA (WMO) | According to the World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high in 2013, propelled by a surge in levels of carbon dioxide. This injected even greater urgency into the need for concerted international action against accelerating and potentially devastating climate […]
WMO’s annual Executive Council meeting discusses weather services, climate change
June 19, 2014
June 18, 2014 | The World Meteorological Organization’s annual Executive Council meeting took place yesterday, following a year of extreme weather events and climate change developments. The Executive Council of 37 members meets each year to “discuss progress in WMO priority programmes and service delivery.” This year’s agenda included 13 major items which ranged from […]
Ocean acidification and the “short term“ marine carbon cycle
August 1, 2012
By Franziska Kersten, PhD Candidate in Marine Geology and Paleontology – Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven (Germany). The 2007 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Synthesis Report discusses ocean acidification and its potential to harm marine calcifiers (e.g. corals) in the future. Yet a recent report in Science unequivocally states that parts of the […]
On the way to Rio+20: Adaptation Futures
June 7, 2012
By Luisa Cristini, PhD, University of Hawaii at Manoa. In a couple of weeks, on June 20-22, 2012, the countries of the United Nations (UN) will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the Conference on Sustainable Development: Rio+20. The conference is an historic opportunity to define a safer, cleaner, greener and more prosperous future […]
Historical Climatic Data and Infectious Disease: Messages from the Past Help Forecast Epidemics of the Future
May 26, 2012
By Jason Klein, Environmental Writer and Editor The connections between climate change and infectious diseases are far more complex and numerous than the scope of this article can entail, as a search on your favorite search engine will tell you. Our specific question is: can an analysis of historical climatic data help us to understand […]
Methane: It’s Not Just for Jupiter Any More
May 15, 2012
By Jason Klein, Environmental Writer and Editor The molecule methane (CH4) can be found on many planets in our solar system, including Earth. Its presence is essential for life as we know it, and can be found in the guts of cattle and termites. Methane is also a by-product of plant decomposition, and is the […]
Tree Rings: A Type of Weather Data
May 8, 2012
By Penny Paugh Trees grow on every continent except Antarctica, and the rings they contain embody a record of climate change going back thousands of years. Each ring represents a single year’s growth, so not only can a ring count tell us how old a tree is, but they can also help reconstruct climatic history […]
The Economic Impact of Extreme Weather in the US
May 4, 2012
A team of social scientists and economists from Colorado and California recently completed a study on the United States economy’s sensitivity to weather variability: extreme heat, extreme cold, droughts, and floods. This study marked the first time that US economic susceptibility to extreme weather had been explicitly quantified. Seventy years of atmospheric data were used […]