Another World Is Possible

"In the world we live in, the bad wolf of climate change has already ransacked the straw house and the house made of sticks, and the inhabitants of both are now knocking on the door of the brick house where the people of the developed world live” - Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Climate Change, developement and energy problems in South Africa another world is possible is a report by Earthlife Africa Johannesburg (Oxfam International) is an interesting summary of the current state of South Africa in terms of CC. (Thanks go to Arame for pointing out this report)

South Africa is reported to be the highest emitter GHG in Africa. As it currently stands South Africa is under no legal obligation to cut emissions but they should be under a moral obligation, SA is on the edge with respect to Climate Change as it is.

The executive summary stated that SA reducing its emissions would send a clear message to the world that would increase its negotiating power. Given what happened in Copenhagen where SA was sidelined, can we say this?

I'm always curious as to how the international community views South Africa when discussing various conccepts like poverty, disadvantaged, third world, African, political power etc

An interesting experiment suggested by Nimi (the other SA YSSP):
Google: 'poverty' or 'township' or 'development' and see what images you get.

Then check out this Youtube ad.

PPA: Implementation and Evaluation

This seminar really should be title "Mind the Gap" which fits perfectly with the new overall course title "How to analyse the Ministry of Magic". Public Policy Analysis seminars offer a vast range of odd examples

Today we discussed the Implementation and Evaluation of policies and tools available to facilitate this. There are two approaches; Top-down and Bottom-up that cover the horizontal and vertical policy space.

The top-down approach is the one I am most familiar approach. A policy is formulated by a high-power (government? Ministry of Magic?) and then the orders for implementation are filtered down a change of command. This can lead to a Broken Telephone effect with information leaking at each step (Is it geeky to admit that I like the visual of heat equations that lose energy in each direction?). How can one improve this? Perhaps offer implementation incentives, improve communication channels. This is an ideal type, there is no policy that fits perfectly into this approach but it is interesting to note why policies failed using it such as poor formulation or power issues. The analysis can show the implementation gap...or Mind the Gap!

The bottom-up approach seems to be a bit more haphazard in nature which conflicts with my personality. The policy is dependent on a network of street-level bureaucrats that share resources and have a level of discretion. How do you analyse this? With great difficulty, there is a horizontal layer with weak structure from what I can gather. Policies are negotiated and there is a great deal of uncertainty. Policies have very vague goals with no associated metrics.

What have I learnt from this 6 seminar course dip into the world of social science? I am very much a quantitative scientist who likes structure, people are confusing and politics even more so. Do I ever want to enter the minefield of policy design, probably not. I think I'd offend too many people by telling them their process sucks.

Suggested Reading:
Paul Sabatier (1986), Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches to Implementation Research: A Critical Analysis and Suggested Synthesis”,Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 6, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1986), pp. 21-48.

Paper Review

I've been approached to do my first ever paper review. Now normally I would cringe at the thought of more work but at the moment other people's work is looking far more interesting than doing mine.

Obviously I can't say who, what or where for but I can say that I now realise you need to be very well read to actually do a review properly.

The process did however remind me of the PhD Comic: Paper Review Worksheet.

In other news we had a visit from the Franz-Schubert-Instituts bei Wien for the morning. A group of YSSP participants strolled around the Schlosspark and had lunch with the group. The purpose: For art to meet Science. They even got a Schloss tour which the YSSP group didn't including the ballroom and breakfast room off the director's office.

As the sun sets over Laxenburg I have discovered something awesome: the IIASA wireless works all the way to the busstop :) That means you can sit and catch while waiting for the bus...or do work.

PPA: Social Problems

We attended the third Public Policy Lecture today on Social problems. This is the first week I have actually enjoyed the readings, they made logical sense (I know its a very scientific view). Policy analysis thinks about solving problems (policies are MEANT to solve problems). There are many problems and beliefs as to why they are in fact social problems. Good examples include drug abuse, guns, poverty, energy efficiency. Each has a state in the world and is measurable by some metric.

In framing a problem there are three (well more but the are only looking at three) viewpoints. Positivism, Functionalism and Social Constructivism. When reviewing the problem one looks at the Nature of the problem, Causes of social problem, Methods to review and ways to Intervene.

In Positivism (exogenous), the problem is considered a disease caused by individuals or societies failings (weaknesses). One can measure through observation and remove the cause (excise disease). This approach is expert-driven and undemocratic.

The second Functionalism (endogenous) looks at a problem as a function to society. One needs deviants to know normality. One can once again measure this and then adjust norms to maintain a balance. This approach is also expert-driven.

The last is Social Constructivism and in this you can re-interpret the problem and states that there is no direct access to reality, that everything we do is an interpretation. It believes that social constructions reflect conflicts. Unlike the previous two Social Constructivism is not analytic but rather hermeneutic (interpretive). It challenges dormant constructions. This is one viewpoint I have the most difficulty understanding.

This is a reference that came up during the lecture: Charles Booth who designed the first poverty maps of London, his scale cause a lot of comic relief.

The associated readings:

• Fuller and Myers (1941), “A Natural History of Social Problems”, American Sociological Review, 6:3, pp.320-329.
• Elaine B. Sharp (1994), “Paradoxes of National Antidrug Policymaking”, in David A. Rochefort and Roger W. Cobb (1994), The Politics of Problem Definition: Shaping the Policy Agenda, University Press of Kansas, Kansas. pp. 98-116

Applying Climate Information in Africa

I'm currently making my way through what seems to be a literature bible for applications of climate information in various African countries across sectors and scales: "Applying Climate Information in Africa, An assessment of current knowledge". The report was written by Anthony Patt of IIASA for NOAA. I would highly recommend it for anyone doing climate work in South Africa.

PPA: Actors and Venues of Policy-Making

Today is the second Public Policy Analysis seminar by Stephen Ney where we discussed actors active or passive in policy making, these could be individuals or institutions at various levels. The diagram below shows the output of the seminar, an idea of the policy network and how they influence each other. Mine looks largely hierarchical and rigid, not as fluid and open as others. Mine also maps funding and knowledge exchanges (in red). Its interesting when writing up your research results with the anticipation that it is policy relevant one can see who to target and possibly how.

Preparatory Readings:
Atkinson and Coleman (1992), “Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance”,Governance, 5(2): 154-180.
Chris Ansell (2000), “The Networked Polity: Regional Development in Western Europe”,Governance, Vol.13, No.3, pp.303-333.

PPA: What is Public Policy Analysis

IIASA/YSSP offers students a series of seminars covering a variety of modeling and social topics. Today is the start of a six part seminar series on Public Policy Analysis by Stephan Ney. The overall objective for the course is "to introduce YSSP students to the approaches, frameworks and methods of contemporary policy analysis".

Today we delved into the realm of sociology to public policy analysis. As a scientist with no/little sociology background the question is firstly what is the definition[1], something I discovered is not actually that easy to answer.

Firstly what is POLICY? Try name some examples. You immediately get Health Care, Foreign, Education, Population etc. What about smaller scale? Gun control, Gas Emissions, Public Procurement, the list goes on. What do they all have in common? A set of rules, intentions, sequence of actions, normative and mostly government initialised. We finally agreed that Policy is an outcome/stance/process that has an underlying theory usually with with desired goals and an evaluative standard.

Some nice definitions include: "web of decisions and actions that allocate values" - Easton or "Policy is rather like the elephant - you recognise it when you see it, but you cannot easily define it" - Cunningham.

Moving on to PUBLIC, what makes a policy public? Start with what is not public like corporate. Then there are "Corporate Social Responsibility" policies. It can be argued (indeed it was) that while the corporate is pursuing some private interest it is of public interest. The consensus is that Public means it is of public interest (collective interest), usually requires some sort of oversight or government action and is defined by civil society.

Now ANALYSIS: Why analyse policies? It affects us, to improve things, efficiency, knowledge acquisition, transparency, evaluation, decision-support, effects of. You could probably name quite a few more.

[1] H. Hugh Heclo (1972), “Policy Analysis”, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.2, No.1 (Jan 1972), pp.83-108

Visiting SAWS

Simon Mason from IRI is visiting South Africa for a project with the South Africa Weather Bureau (SAWS). I had the opportunity to go to Pretoria to ask a few questions to the expert himself. Below I have listed a few things I learnt on my trip:

There are 3 attributes that one must consider in verification of forecasts:
• Resolution: Conditioning on the forecast. If you forecast something, does it happen? A forecast is useful if you have some resolution. Difficult to measure (need lots of data). Good for regions not grid boxes.
• Discrimination: Conditioning on outcomes. If it rains, did we forecast it. Needs less data. Can get map
• Reliability: Measures confidence and bias. Not useful on its own. Need to use (Resolution ∪ Discrimination) ∩ Reliability

Defining a region of study:
It is worth starting at 20 degrees latitude and longitude on each side of area interested and then narrow down by looking at diagnostic maps from GCM to downscaled. Easy to do with CCA. If looking at geo-potential height as an indicator, then the region may need to be bigger to include larger scale synoptic conditions.

Some extra literature for my spare time:
[1] R. Hagedorn and L. A. Smith. Communicating the value of probabilistic forecasts with weather roulette. Meteorological Applications, 2008.
[2] S. J. Mason. Recommended procedures for the verification of operational seasonal climate forecasts. 2010.
[3] A. H. Murphy and D. S. Wilks. A case study of the use of statistical models in forecast veri- fication: Precipitation probability forecasts. Weather and Forecasting, 13:795–810, September 1998.
[4] M. S. Roulston and L. A. Smith. Evaluating probabilistic forecasts using information theory. Monthly Weather Review, 130:1653–1660, June 2002.
[5] M. K. Tippett and A. G. Barnston. Skill of multimodel enso probability forecasts. Monthly Weather Review, 136:3933–3946, 2008.

Journal Club MTG9: Land Use and Land Cover Change

My topic of research while in Michigan is on Land Use and Land Cover Change which made today's paper which I had to present especially interesting. The paper "Evaluating the effects of historical land cover change on summertime weather and climate in New Jersey: Land cover and surface energy budget changes" by Paul Wichansky et al (2008), investigates the sensitivity of a warm season climate of New Jersey to land cover change from 1880s versus 1990s. The areas of specific interest include the magnitude of land cover change and sensitivity on near surface air temperature, rainfall, dew point temperature, heat fluxes and climatological episodes.

Previous studies have shown that deforestation causes an increase in temperature and rainfall shifts, while reforestation causes cooling in the region. Urbanisation also causes an increase in temperatures and changes to the diurnal cycle. The interesting thing to note is that all three processes have occurred in the state of New Jersey within the last century. Reconstructing the land cover from historical topographical maps and land consensus, a full land cover map was available for direct comparison with NLCD data from 1992. Aggregated to 1km and combined into 8 vegetation classes, the researchers used RAMS and LEAF2 to compare atmospheric responses to land cover change.

They nested the grid in 3 levels (above-purple) and 3 ensemble members per land cover scenario, they used a 2 month period in June/July 1999. From NCEP data to force atmospheric boundary conditions, they used June as a spinup and July as a month for analysis. The soil moisture was described from observation.

The model comparisons showed an increase in near surface air temperature and dew point temperature in urban and deforested areas and cooler in reforested areas, just as previous research stated. The results overall come as no surprise but they way they use the ensemble without giving the spread or error is slightly weird.

Journal Club MTG8: Isoprene emissions

Today's article "The effect of elevated CO2, soil and atmospheric water deficit and seasonal phenology on leaf and ecosystem isoprene emission" by Emiliano Pegoraro describes an experimental biosphere laboratory in that looks at stresses to cottonwood plantations and their responses with respect to isoprenes. The experiment ran over a few years, and looked specifically at the fall of 2000, fall of 2002 and spring of 2003 to cover the range of phenological influences. The plantations were controlled, one with present day CO2 levels and one with elevated CO2 levels. The plantations were both stressed as a result of a vapour pressure deficit (VPD) and drought conditions. The idea was to measure the isoprene emissions under various conditions. The results show a correlation between photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) which makes sense as isoprene emissions shutdown with the absence of light. It was interesting that as the drought conditions continued, no matter the CO2 concentration, the isoprene levels tailored off to roughly the same emission rate.

As a side note, I am finally learning all that high school biology I didn't take.

Journal Club MTG6: Global Change and Ozone Air Quality

This week we delve back into organic chemistry with an article on ozone quality over the United States. Titled "Effects of 2000-2050 global change on ozone air quality in the United States" by Shiliang Wu et al (2008), the paper looks at various changes in climate and anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors using the GEOS-Chem model. Looking into the sensitivity of ozone to climate events, one can see minimal changes in the southeast, but large increases in ozone as the cyclone tracks change and don't protrude inland as far as presently occurs. The anthropogenic emissions are looked at under the A1B scenario from IPCC and has a decrease in emissions in the US and as a result a significant decrease over southeast. The final consensus is that the emissions cap currently in place at 40% needs to be increased to 50% to take into account the effects of climate change by 2050.

An interesting question at this point is, given that decreases are going to have different effects in different regions, should we have one solution at a federal level(in the US) or a state level?

Journal Club MTG5: Urban Parameterization for CCSM Part II

The paper this week is "An Urban Parameterization for the Global Climate Model. Part II: Sensitivity to Input Parameters and the Simulated Urban Heat Island in Offline Simulations" by Oleson et al. The paper builds on the previous paper and looks at the sensitivity to changing parameters within the model. The split the parameter types in 3 categories, morphological, radiance and thermal. Each category was combined using every possible combination within its own category. The results of this highlight that previous surfaces, or the lack thereof, greatly influence the latent heat available and the sensible heat is very sensitive to both the morphological and radiance parameters. The paper moves on to simulating heat islands and compared this is Oke(1981) who derived a logarithmic equation based on measurements of heat islands in US and European cities. The model simulates the increased diurnal cycle and temperature difference between urban and rural environments. The sensitivity studies also real that parameter uncertainty mainly effects the amplitude of the diurnal cycle and not the phase. Overall the paper has a few confusing parts and many graphs that could be simplified or removed, but I felt this study did a much better job than some sensitivity studies of other areas in the past.

Journal Club MTG4: Atmospheric Feedbacks

The article today was "Atmospheric / vegetation feedbacks: A mechanism for abrupt climate change over northern Africa" by CM Patricola and KH Cook. The paper discusses the sensitivity to the latitude of the desert border in the Sahara and the atmospheric feedbacks in the African easterly jet (AEJ). The idea is that if the desert border is located below 17.9N the climate becomes sensitive and the summer precipitation and a weakening in the AEJ. There are a few concerns with the paper as they use prescribed soil moisture and do not discuss the land cover model used.

Journal Club MTG3: Ozone Interannual Variability

Today is yet again journal club day. We are reviewing a paper by S Koumoutsaris et al. "Influence of El-Nino-Southern Oscillation on the Interannual Variability of tropospheric ozone in the northern midlatitudes". It is a rather long and figure intensive article that documents CO and O3. The author used the Goddard Earth Observing System Chem (GEOS-Chem) model to explore the correlation between El-Nino and O3. The model accurately captures the sensitivities to biomass burning and the meteorology for CO but not completely for O3. The study is conducted at 4 x 5 degrees that disregards the regional features. It is important to note that the article explains the shortfalls in capturing all the O3 from stratospheric dynamics and intrusions.

Journal Club MTG2: Urban Parameterization for CCSM

As part of the journal meetings we are reviewing "An Urban Parameterization for a Global Climate Model. Part 1: Formulation and Evaluation for Two Cities" by KW Oleson et al. The paper reviews efforts to capture land use change in urban areas and the effects this has on the atmosphere. The global models currently divides the world into a grid and each grid cell is further divided into various plant function types and wetland, urban etc. Each is dealt with separately however there is no scheme for urban areas. This paper presents an "urban canyon" solution that supposedly captures the urban climatology. There are separate energy balances and surface temperatures for each canyon facet. I really appreciate the added heat sources from waste (air conditioners) and traffic. A 1D heat conduction is solved numerically for fluxes in and out of surfaces. The paper then describes an experiment looking at two different cities areas, Mexico City and Vancouver. The results suggest an increased understanding of fluxes but says that the timing is off in the model, but note that no one has perfected the urban diurnal cycle. I want to note that the observations are rather sparse though. The paper also states that implementing this system globally might be problematic as no urban map yet exists categorising urban types. Something to look forward to in the future. Lastly a relevant question is, at what resolution does this actually matter? Perhaps a global view is not the answer but maybe regional is.

Journal Club MTG1: Atmospheric Chemistry

I attended my first ever Journal Club today with my supervisor here and fellow officemates. The topic: Atmospheric oxidation capacity sustained by a tropical forest by Lelieveld et al. Interesting paper from Nature that explores a theory which opposes known science in atmospheric chemistry. The idea is that OH is recycled through some mechanism in a low NOx environment like a rainforest. The paper is not great, requires a lot of supplementary material but it has jumpstarted my organic chemistry understanding, last attempted in high school. It also started to fill in the gaps of knowledge I have about various plugins in global climate models. However unless you are an organic chemist or have one handy (my officemate Ahmed very kindly spent an hour patiently explaining things) don't bother.