|
|
|
|
ARM of Climate Science
Tue Dec 06, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for the Weather Notebook’s Climate Change Series. Over the
years, we have talked about organizations such as NOAA and NASA, and their work in
the Climate Change field. Another interested governmental agency is The Department
of Energy. Why are they involved? Here’s Tom Ackerman, of the Atmospheric Radiation
Measurement Program.
TA: The DOE is concerned about climate and climate change because it’s the end
product in some sense of all of the energy that we produce.
BY: Ackerman’s program studies clouds and radiation, in order to understand the
physics of what goes on up there, and alter the models to better simulate future
climate. They have a variety of sites around the globe working on this.
TA: Essentially, what we are trying to do is to sample, not monitor, but to sample the
extremes of climate that we see in our system from polar climate to equatorial climate
to a continental mid-latitude climate, which actually has extremely large variability
between summer and winter.
Why are we doing this? How will this help us down the road 40-50 years?
Part of it is that we have to adapt to change, because we already created some
change, we’re going to have to adapt, too. The other part is that we are going to try to
mitigate and we’re going to try to mitigate by changing the way in which we produce
and use energy. The sooner we know the better we can say, "This is what we think the
future will look like."
I think we need to be accountable. This is the public purse that we’re spending. But,
the public also needs to realize that being accountable should not constrain the
operation of the science so much that it inhibits to creativity.
BY: Our Climate Change Series is funded by Environmental Defense. Continuing
support comes from Subaru of America.
Today's Links
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program
http://www.arm.gov/
|
|
