The Bridge: Connecting Science and Policy

May 25, 2016

Funding Season is Open: Part 3

Thanks for staying with us as we continue to break down federal science funding for fiscal year 2017 (FY2017). To completely understand how the FY2017 landscape is evolving, I encourage you to check out the first and second parts of our funding Bridge posts. As you’ll recall, we previously laid out the good and bad of the Senate’s appropriations bill covering NASA, DOE’s Office of Science, NOAA, and the National …

June 12, 2014

New research questions emerge from Arctic melting

By Alexandra Branscombe Originally posted on AGU GeoSpace WASHINGTON, DC – What is hidden within and beneath Arctic ice? Why does winter matter? What is being irretrievably lost as the Arctic changes? These are just some of the emerging questions that scientists are being challenged to answer about the rapidly changing Arctic in a new report, “The Arctic in the Anthropocene: Emerging Research Questions,” released last month by the National …

June 9, 2014

WICCI and the Science / Policy Conversation

By Dan Vimont, co-chair, Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICC) I am a climate scientist who has spent my career understanding the physics of the climate system, and the impacts of climate variability and climate change. I am a co-chair of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI), an effort to understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change that now includes over 200 individuals around Wisconsin. …

June 4, 2014

Risky Business Brings New Message—and Messengers—to Climate Debate

By Kate Gordon, Executive Director, Risky Business Despite massive scientific evidence that climate change will have significant effects on the American economy, the business and finance world is still largely turning a blind eye to climate risk. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Farallon Capital founder Tom Steyer started the Risky Business initiative to change this dynamic and create a new shared understanding …

May 12, 2014

As West Antarctica melts, the urgency for climate change adaptation rises

By Lexi Shultz, Director of Public Affairs at the American Geophysical Union and Kat Compton, Public Affairs Intern As if the recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Climate Assessment (NCA) weren’t enough of a reminder of the ways in which human actions are changing our planet, new research published in the current edition of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) presents evidence that part of …

May 9, 2014

Tornadoes and Climate Change: Challenges in Interpreting the Record and Looking Forward

By Harold E. Brooks, Senior Research Scientist, NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory With the release of the new National Climate Assessment, the scientific community has put forward our best understanding of the changes that have occurred and are expected to occur as the planet continues to warm. Noticeably, little is said about tornadoes in this document. There’s good reason for this absence. Despite a wide variety of speculation in the online …

April 4, 2014

Cutting back on refrigerants could drop greenhouse gas emissions

By Alexandra Branscombe Originally posted on AGU GeoSpace WASHINGTON, DC – Phasing down powerful climate-damaging greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners could prevent the equivalent of up to three years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. Research accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, calculates the environmental impact of phasing down …