Download Considering Climate Change in Road and Building Design.

EOS
VOLUME 94 NUMBER 30 23 JULY 2013
MEETINGS
ABOUT AGU
Capacity Building for the Caribbean Region
An Update on AGU Publishing
Climate change and its impact was
the subject of a recent workshop held in
Havana, Cuba, as part of a project called
The Future of Climate Extremes in the
Caribbean (XCUBE). The project is a joint
endeavor by Norway and Cuba, funded by
the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection through Norway’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.
The XCUBE project’s goals are to better
understand future changes in the Caribbean
climate, with a special focus on hurricanes
and drought; to provide training to researchers at INSMET, the Meteorological Institute
in Cuba; and to improve the infrastructure
at INSMET. The XCUBE workshop was organized together with another NorwegianCuban project called COLLABORATE. The
participants could therefore choose from a
range of talks and courses. For the XCUBE
part these included three main sessions:
invited talks, poster presentations, and
tutorials.
Two invited speakers presented at the
workshop: Alan Robock of Rutgers University and Odd Helge Otterå of Uni Research,
Norway. Robock gave talks entitled “Is Geoengineering a Solution to Global Warming?” and “Volcanic Eruptions and Climate.”
Otterå discussed multidecadal variability in
a talk entitled “Searching for the Metronome
in the Climate Orchestra—On Natural and
Man-Made Climate Changes.”
Students had 5 minutes each to make
poster presentations and discuss their
research work. They then received feedback
from the audience. The quality of research
was impressive and insightful, and the students—70% of whom were women—had the
chance to get comments and advice from an
international body of scientists.
The third session involved two capacitybuilding tutorials: “Satellite Applied Agricultural Meteorology,” given by Humberto
Barbosa of the Federal University of Alagoas in Brazil, on remote sensing tools that
can be used for monitoring crops and “Multimodel Verification Using Bayesian Statistics,” taught by Michel d. S. Mesquita of
Uni Research in Bergen, Norway, on Bayesian data analysis concepts applied to climate research. The latter tutorial continued
online as a 10-week course at http://m2lab
.org. This is the first time many of these scientists have received online training.
Overall, the three sessions organized at
the XCUBE workshop provided participants
with an opportunity to discuss current science, to give INSMET researchers and students new tools for working with climate
research, and to enhance bilateral scientific
cooperation. The next phase of the capacitybuilding program is already in place: Participants will be taking an online course on
dynamical downscaling, and a workshop on
seasonal forecasting is planned for 2014.
—MiChEl d. S. MESQuita, Uni Research, Bergen,
Norway; E-mail: [email protected]; alaN
RoBoCk, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N. J.;
and JuaN CaRloS aNtuÑa, Meteorological Institute,
Cuba
Considering Climate Change
in Road and Building Design
First Infrastructure and Climate Network Steering Committee Workshop;
Durham, New Hampshire, 8–9 January 2013
What is the role of climate in infrastructure design? How can engineers design for
a changing climate? How can climate scientists better inform the design process? These
were the questions posed at the first Infrastructure and Climate Network (ICNet) Steering Committee Workshop, which was sponsored by a U.S. National Science Foundation research grant (CBET-1231326) from the
Research Coordination Networks- Science,
Engineering and Education for Sustainability
(RCN-SEES) program.
The workshop brought together climate
scientists, civil engineering researchers,
and engineering practitioners to address the
challenges of considering climate change
in road and bridge design in New England.
ICNet members are seeking to accelerate
research in climate change and transportation infrastructure through a process of collaboration and coeducation.
A major theme of the meeting was the differences in language used in the climate
science and civil engineering communities. Meaningful exchanges require a common understanding of terms used by each
discipline, as well as terms that both disciplines use but with different meanings. One
example is the word “conservative,” which
in climate science findings means using
the lower levels of change or effects but in
civil engineering means designing to effectively accommodate the high end of possible
impacts and stresses. This matter of differences in definitions and conceptual framing
of problems and problem-oriented research
was expanded on throughout the meeting
and became a key finding for discussion
papers now being written.
Another conclusion was that the engineering community needs some climate design
parameters that climate models cannot provide with confidence. For example, bridge
designers need to know the expected lifetime maximum 3-second wind speed. Current climate models do not generate this
information. In contrast, climate scientists
can provide long-term temperature projections, but bridge designers have limited
use for this information. Participants also
learned that road design is presently more
finely tuned to climate than bridge design.
However, the engineering community
agreed that bridge design may be improved
by more attention to climate.
Besides presentations by participants, the
workshop experimented with the fictitious
Anytown. Anytown is a generalized, conceptual New England community with a variety
of road and bridge infrastructure types that
are subject to weather- and climate- driven
forces, including extreme weather events
such as flooding, snow and ice storms, heat
waves, and high winds and, in coastal settings, sea level rise. Participants were given
qualitative estimates of future changes to
air temperature and precipitation, then conducted an expert review of the potential
impacts on bridges and roads. The Any town
model served to focus discussion on key
design and climate variables and also was a
learning tool, promoting communication of
each participant’s underlying assumptions.
A large regional meeting of ICNet
researchers was held in April. These two
workshops effectively initiated the network.
There is strong interest in new collaborations facilitated by ICNet on both network
building and new research and publication. Participants are now transitioning from
some of the initial communication and integration tools used (such as Any town) to
modified and new tools including more specific examples that connect climate model
output to the engineering context.
The authors thank all of the meeting participants who contributed to this summary.
Others are invited to learn more about ICNet
at http://theicnet.org/.
receive an additional honorarium. Overall,
AGU derives about two thirds of its income
from journals, and that revenue is critical for
supporting many other member activities.
In addition to the strong journal program,
AGU publishes a wide variety of books,
including the Special Publications and Geophysical Monograph series. The book catalog includes more than 70 active titles and a
backlist of hundreds more books. Recently,
AGU has added about 4 new titles per year.
AGU Partnership With Wiley
AGU decided that to remain competitive
in the dynamic publishing environment, it
is critical to have a large publishing partner
actively involved in exploring new developments. Many other societies have also
recently partnered with larger publishers for
the same reason: They bring technological
expertise, capital, and innovation in online
publishing at a time when publishing capabilities and needs are changing rapidly. Publishing partners can also provide global marketing and sales forces with a far larger reach
than what most societies can achieve.
In July 2012 AGU decided to partner with
John Wiley & Sons for the production and
publication of its journals and books (see
http://about.agu.org/past-presidents-message/
agu-partnership -with-wiley-blackwell/). The
transfer of the journal catalog and production
work began in late fall 2012, and most content appeared on Wiley’s site in early January
2013. This was the first major step of a large
and complex transition: The production work
and online appearance, in particular, are still
being refined, and new features and functions continue to be introduced.
AGU’s decision to partner with Wiley was
made through discussions among AGU leadership, the Board, Council, and members
over several months. Wiley publishes more
society content than any other publisher,
and working with societies is a key part of
their business model. Furthermore, Wiley
About AGU
cont. on next page
What’s on the Web?
Read the latest offerings from the AGU Blogosphere:
Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal: “Baltimore weathercaster under fire for incorrect statements on climate change” (http://
rlm.ag/VNp5G)
The Landslide Blog: “An interesting
valley-blocking landslide (not a glacial
lake problem) above Badrinath temple in
Uttarakhand, India” (http://goo.gl/C6ZkH)
Mountain Beltway: “Rockies 5 concludes” (http://goo.gl/mKp9p)
Georneys: “Monday geology picture:
Snow in South Africa” (http://goo.gl/ytHar)
Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal:
“‘Clean coal’ is literally killing 500 million
China residents” (http://goo.gl/vodhI)
IWildlife were plentiful and easily seen up
close in a just-concluded field geology course
in the Rockies. In addition to this mountain
goat, students sighted about a dozen
grizzlies, a black bear or two, four wolves,
bighorn sheep, bison, elk, and otters, writes
blogger Callan Bentley in his Mountain
Beltway blog.
What better place to hold the meeting than
an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
where there is emphasis on ridge to reef connection,
the ultimate in ecosystem-based management;
where there is interest in
—JENNiFER M. JaCoBS, Paul h. kiRShEN, and Jo
SiaS daNiEl, University of New Hampshire, Durham;
E-mail: [email protected]
Renew Your Membership Today!
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264
Scholarly publishing is changing rapidly
in many ways: The concept of a research
paper is evolving and expanding as new
tools and services become available for
authors, reviewers, and readers. Content is
read or viewed in different ways, each with
specific needs, challenges, and opportunities. Financial models are dynamic, and calls
for increasing access to papers are growing.
While new models of peer review are emerging and being explored, the stamp of peer
review is becoming increasingly important to
society and evaluators of research, and filtering for quality and relevance is increasingly
important to researchers. Research books are
also changing greatly, from print to e-book,
with access required on different platforms
and with new, interactive features.
AGU publishing has to evolve to meet
these challenges, and we need your help and
input. As the start of a regular Eos series on
issues in scientific publishing in general and
AGU’s content in particular and to start this
needed conversation, we provide an overview and update of recent developments in
AGU publishing.
AGU currently publishes 19 journal titles
(http://publications.agu.org/journals/). Two
are fully open access (JAMES and our new
journal, Earth’s Future), and one is published
in partnership with other societies (Earth
Interactions, published jointly with the American Meteorological Society and the Association of American Geographers). In addition,
AGU hosts the English version of the Chinese
Journal of Geophysics and offers print subscriptions at a reduced rate to the European
Geosciences Union journal Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics. Geophysical Research
Letters publishes the most papers, followed
by Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR):
Atmospheres, JGR: Space Physics, and Water
Resources Research. All journals have an editor in chief—some operate with editors only,
whereas the larger ones tend also to have
associate editors. Editorial assistance is provided by dedicated AGU staff. Editors receive
compensation in proportion to the number
of papers they handle, and editors in chief
Callan Bentley
XCUBE Workshop;
Havana, Cuba, 19–22 March 2013
combining
traditional knowledge with sciencebased understanding; where islands are in threat of
disappearing from sea level rise; and where East and
West can easily meet.
http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2014