Agclimate telecon 2015-10-06

Back to Ag & Climate Workspace

Agenda (Joint with Energy & Climate Work Group)

• LuAnn Dalhman (NOAA Climate Program Office) on Climate Resilience Toolkit (CRT), Case Study template, and process for becoming a CRT Case Study
• Amir AghaKouchak (Center for Hydrology and Remote Sensing, UC Irvine) on his current research and what could be a basis for a CRT Case Study. Here's his presentation at the Summer Meeting in Asilomar: Remote sensing of drought: Progress and opportunities for improving drought monitoring in California
• Open Discussion
• Winter 2016 Meeting theme(s) for our session(s)

Minutes:

October 6th, 2015 Telecon: Discussion Notes

Bill's notes from Oct'15 telecon

Bar's Minutes:

Climate Resiliency Toolkit

• Anyone is a potential contributor.
• The toolkit - Has been live for one year and is in redesign phase I

Two main parts for contribution:

1. Case Studies - There are 9 topics so far. Can be filtered by topic, region, etc. Agriculture (for example) has close to 100

2. Tools - Behind the scenes. Inter-agency effort Each topic has a “theme leader”

For Case Studies:

• There is a metadata template (word document) - redesign is happening soon, but still useful to look at.
• There is also a “Tip Sheet” for writing Case Studies:

• Ideally looking for a story/narrative in a word file.
• 400-800 words
• protagonist/character with a problem to solve, narrative flow
• There are collaborators/science editors willing to work with the text/collaborate

The Case Study Template (a bit outdated) http://bit.ly1k9bQye (zipped file)

• 10’s of thousands of users per month use the CRT according to Google Analytics
• People are going to “Climate Explorer” first, it seems.

Drought Monitoring: Amir

No particular narrative, per se, but with many calls form users and want-to-be-users from all over the world:

• Grant to talk to farmers.
• Example outputs of model.
• Developed a mobile app: drought information tool - GIDMap = online mobile app
• four data sources (not real-time, but could be with the proper servers) GPCP / GPM / TRIMM / MER
• 4km global resolution and near real time.
• Only NOAA has the “real time data” - otherwise, wait 72 hours after its published. They run algorithims on NOAA machines.

Climate Resiliency Toolkit:

• Classic ingredient for a story - people are callling.
• The group is obviously trying to meet the needs of the community, and there are clearly needs in the community.
• Example: They are getting a lot of emails about the data. EX: from a small city in northern Canada.
• Recipe is to pair scienctists with writers… potential users to show the range

NEXT STEPS

• tips available from the CRT
• continue to connect researchers with CRT (LuAnn and writers)

Winter Meeting Thoughts/Ideas: NSF Program Officer: Food/Energy/Water (FEW) future proposals/intentions agro/climatology/crop yield monitoring, anegy and ag at the USDA academia

Attendees:

Bill Teng
Lindsay Barbieri (Bar)
Richard Eckman
Brian Wee
Yonsook Enloe
LuAnn Dahlman
Brent Newman
Seung Kim
Amir AghaKouchak
1 other call-in attendee?