What do Google searches tell us about our climate change fears?

A press release from Springer: Republicans search the Net for information about the weather, climate change and global warming during extremely hot or cold spells. Democrats google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures. These are some of the surprising findings from a study by Corey Lang of the University of Rhode Island in the US, published in Springer’s journal Climatic Change. He tracked how the temperature fluctuations and rainfall that Americans experience daily in their own cities make them scour the Internet in search of information about climate change and global warming. To do so, he used data from Google Trends, local weather stations and election results.

Google Trends aggregates all Google searches that are made, and measures how popular a specific search term is. Users can fine tune this to be specific to a particular place (such as a country or city) and time (such as monthly or on a specific date). Lang specifically checked how often, when and where citizens in 205 cities in the US used the search terms “global warming,” “climate change” and “weather.” The terms “drought” and “flood” were also included because increases in these natural phenomena are important predicted impacts of climate change. Monthly statistics were collected for the period from January 2004 to May 2013. Lang then matched them with local weather station data, as well as the 2008 presidential election results in Dave Leip’s “Atlas of Presidential Elections.”

Lang found that search activity increased when extreme heat was felt in summer, when no rain fell over extended periods, and when there were fewer extreme cold snaps in winter. Such weather fluctuations are consistent with projected climate change. Interestingly though, searches also increased when average winter and spring temperatures dropped – events that are inconsistent with global warming. Lang believes this could mean that people who observe unusual extreme weather conditions are genuinely interested in learning more about climate change. It could, however, also mean that deniers, who experience an unusually cool winter, go online to confirm their skeptical views that the world is not really growing warmer.

People from varying political and educational backgrounds reach for their devices at different times to check out information on climate change. Republicans and people from less educated areas do more relevant searches during periods of extreme temperatures, while Democrats and residents of well-educated areas do so when they experience changes in average temperatures.

“Weather fluctuations have an impact on climate change related search behavior, however not always in ways that are consistent with the impacts of climate change. And the research suggests that different types of people experience weather differently or have different perceptions about what type of weather defines climate change, ” concludes Lang....

This rendition of Google's logo by Nyshita talluri, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Mobile data helps Tanzanian herders get ahead of markets, weather

Kizito Makoye in the Thomson Reuters Foundation: Tanzania has devised a new system to help pastoralists and cattle traders track real-time market information on livestock, while keeping them abreast of weather conditions likely to affect their animals’ wellbeing.

The system allows livestock dealers to monitor prices and volumes in markets across the country, while being alerted to the onset of drought and diseases that could affect herds. The Livestock Information Knowledge System (LINKS) is an online platform that uses global positioning system (GPS) technology, text messaging and web-based computer analysis, providing information to pastoralists via mobile phones or the internet.

 “We decided to establish this system because we value the contribution of pastoralists to our economy. However, more education is needed to enable them to make better use of (it),” said
Saning’o Ole Telele, Tanzania’s deputy minister for livestock development and fisheries.

The project was launched in 2013, and so far 53 out of 369 cattle markets have been connected to the system, with a target of covering them all. Changes in trade patterns and market trends allow LINKS to identify and provide early warning of critical food shortages for animals, deteriorating grazing conditions and disease outbreaks.

The system - which is funded and run by the Tanzanian government in partnership with the United States Development Agency, USAID - monitors major domestic livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and horses....

A Tanzanian pastoralist leading livestock into the Ngorongoro Caldera for grazing, shot by Harvey Barrison, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Use big data wisely and it can provide big insights

Robert Kirkpatrick of UN Global Pulse in SciDev.net: The variety of data generated every day — from satellite images to people’s geotagged photos of their breakfast — is astonishing. The sheer quantity now being produced is hard to fathom: experts estimate that 90 per cent of all the digital data in the world has been generated over the last two years.

The term ‘big data’ refers to the information generated by the everyday use of digital services, produced so frequently, in such diverse ways and at scales so large that it cannot be stored or analysed through traditional means. Analysis of this information can provide valuable insights about human behaviour and intentions.

This new era of big data represents significant challenges and opportunities for global development. With support and guidance, the development community can embrace the craft of ‘data science’ to enhance evidence-based decision-making. Yet it is important that humanitarian and development practitioners and policymakers understand that data on its own can’t inform the development agenda without a detailed understanding of its local context.

Global Pulse, a UN innovation initiative established by secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in 2009, is working to build development sector capacity to make use of new sources of digital data while understanding its local context.

The initiative is exploring how powerful the insights from big data can be. One example is our research project looking at how Twitter can provide information on how people are affected by food price spikes. We analysed millions of public tweets from between 2010 and 2011 for particular key words. In one data set containing thousands of tweets from Indonesia discussing the price of rice, we saw that the volume of tweets about staple foods correlated closely with actual spikes in their cost. Learning how to identify and understand such data could help the development community anticipate trends....

Image of a data cloud by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Caribbean policymakers get climate adaptation tool

Lisbeth Fog in SciDev.net: A decision-support website has been launched to help policymakers in the Caribbean build resilience to the risks that climate change poses to activities such as tourism and agriculture.

The Caribbean Climate Online Risk and Adaptation TooL (CCORAL), unveiled last month (12 July) in Saint Lucía, allows users to identify whether their activity is likely to be influenced by climate change and how to deal with this.

It helps project managers to understand climate influence on decisions, and to choose and apply risk management processes. The initial version has been developed for government users of any skill level for decisions about projects, legislation, budgets and national planning.

The tool was developed by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, which coordinates the region's response to climate change, and Acclimatise, a company that specialises in adaptation and risk management. "It was piloted in Jamaica, Suriname, Belize and Barbados to inform its design and content," Keith Nichols, development specialist at the centre, tells SciDev.Net…

An aerial view of Paramaribo in Suriname, shot by Loek Tangel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Netherlands

Back from the void

Our power and internet just returned, after we went dark during the Halloween nor'easter.

Here we are, cooling our heels at a local school serving as a warming center, charging our phones and tablets. I haven't gotten the hang of blogging from an iPad, so I've been reading Anna Karenin instead. It feels appropriate, since Litchfield County has had a 19th century Russian feel to it, only with internal combustion engines and Facebook.

Our personal adaptation to climate disruption has been mixed. On the one hand, we shelled out a few years ago for a powerful generator that kept us going for two and a half days. Then the thrumming fell silent, plunging us into gloom. The lubricating oil had gotten used up, and the manual made refilling it seem daunting. After two dark, cold days, the local electrician's office called and explained out to do it myself. Back in business. I'll be ready next time.

And we were among the fortunate ones. We talked to one guy from Norfolk who had to get up early, chop enough wood for himself and his parents, and then rush to work. At the local school, elderly and disabled neighbors were warming up.

We're hearing much justified muttering about our utility cutting back on trimming trees and on maintenance in general. But still -- two big storms in the past two months strains the entire system.

Zambia turns to Internet to fight climate change

Georgina Smith in AlertNet: Farmers will need access to up-to-the-minute information to adapt effectively to climate change, experts say, but in rural Zambia few have access to the Internet. A southern African communication group hopes to change that by rolling out rural “telecentres” that will act as one-stop shops for communications services in rural areas, offering Internet access, photocopying, credit for mobile phones and other services.
“The internet is an excellent solution” to a variety of problems, said Dean Mulozi, regional facilitator for the Southern Africa Telecentre Network (SATNET), which aims to give rural communities access to and training in how to use communication and information services.

Zambia, like many southern African nations, is seeing increasing prolonged dry seasons and short periods of heavy rainfall, changes believed linked to climate shifts. With most of the country’s population reliant on small-scale farming for a living, the changes are forcing farmers to rethink the way they operate. In particular, many farmers are switching to hardier crops – such as cassava rather than maize – to help ensure food security.

Whether it’s used to look up drought-resistant crops, determine which crops to plant after each harvest to boost nutrients in the soil, or figure out how to retain water in the soil to prepare for dry spells, the Internet has the potential to provide local communities with help in changing practices.

It also allows two-way communication, letting farmers ask questions and pass on their own techniques, rather than simply absorbing information. “Boosting the exchange of knowledge ensures that farmers can communicate and are involved as key agents of change in agricultural practices,” Mulozi said. He said information exchanged on the Internet could be backed up with help from agricultural extension agents….

Nigerian ICT and climate change

Hamzat Bala Lawal in AllAfrica.com via the Daily Trust (Nigeria): Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays major roles in climate change mitigation and adaptation. This is increasingly being recognized within the climate change technology transfer negotiations because according to the World Development Report 2010, the use of ICT is predicted to reduce total greenhouse gases by 15 per cent by 2020.

Beyond climate change mitigation, ICT has a prominent role to play in realizing Nigeria's Vision 2020 mandate of building a large, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that harnesses the energies and talents of its people and guarantee high standard of living and quality of life for its citizens. The convergence between climate change mitigation and meeting growth targets is particularly important to Nigeria.

Overtime, the impact of ICT on sustainable development has often been underestimated by policy makers. The importance of this sector can be felt in the construction of ICT enabled energy efficient buildings and electric appliances, manufacturing, logistics and power grids. Others include ICT enabled business models, markets and lifestyles. It plays essential roles in monitoring, modeling, administration and dissemination of climate change information and technology.

It has other indirect positive impact on the environment, for instance, through its role in increasing general per capita wealth through productivity, GDP growth and boosting the social well being of the populace. It also helps in addressing the poverty situation in the country. It is clear that ICTs, as both general purpose and specific technologies, are necessary in order to monitor, model, administrate and disseminate climate change activities….

Wildlife health reporting tools may help prevent human illness

A very cool idea from the US Geological survey: Two new tools that enable the public to report sick or dead wild animals could also lead to the detection and containment of wildlife disease outbreaks that may pose a health risk to people. The Wildlife Health Event Reporter (WHER) is a new website that enables anyone with an Internet connection to report sightings of sick or dead wildlife.

HealthMap.org has enhanced its mobile phone application “Outbreaks Near Me” to accept and relay wildlife health reports to the WHER site. The application continues to accept reports of human illness. Researchers in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison created the WHER so that people around the world can easily share information about possible health threats to wildlife and humans.

“Avian influenza, SARS, West Nile virus, and rabies are just a few of the rogues’ gallery of human diseases in which wildlife play a role. Seventy-five percent of recent emerging infectious diseases in humans began as animal infections, and most of these have involved wildlife,” explains USGS scientist Joshua Dein, one of the WHER’s developers. “If these tools had been available 10 years ago, we might have had an earlier identification of West Nile virus by people reporting that they were seeing dead crows in their backyards,” said Dein. “We don’t know what the next emerging disease outbreak will be, but given recent history, it will likely be preceded by wildlife health events.”

Users of the WHER create accounts online to register sightings of sick or dead wildlife. Anyone can visit the site to see what others have reported and can subscribe to an RSS feed to receive new reports via e-mail. Reports can be limited to specific states, and data can be readily exported or sent through special feeds to other websites. Local wildlife officials who wish to be notified of observations also can subscribe and, when available, their contact information will be given to those who submit reports.

...Dein notes that the WHER is experimental and will require high participation rates over a considerable period of time to provide useful data. He adds that despite the connections between human and animal diseases, people should not view wildlife as a threat to human health. “A more accurate vision is that we all share risks from these disease threats,” said Dein. “These new tools can help researchers use wildlife as sentinels to alert us to diseases in the environment.”...

Jan Weenix in 1692, "Der weiße Pfau" (the white peacock)

One stop for climate change info

Marlene Cimons in US News and World Report via the National Science Foundation: The “Climate-1 Stop” aims to be just what its name implies: a single place where people easily can find all the reliable information, resources and tools about climate change that they need. “There’s plenty of information out there, but it’s really difficult to find the one specific thing you need,” said Jessica Coughlin. “You can become overwhelmed.”

Coughlin heads the Institute for the Application of Geospacial Technology, a nonprofit organization located in Auburn, N.Y. and affiliated with Cayuga Community College. The institute, which provides expertise in geographic information systems technology, including GPS, remote sensing, digital mapping, and geospatial data, among other things, has created a new single Web site on climate change.

The goal is to help scientists, decision-makers, nonprofit workers, other officials, and even lay people, find the right climate change data they are seeking. The site will provide access to research papers and other documents, news articles, other Web sites and useful tools from other agencies.

“The initial focus is to foster collaboration among climate adaptation and mitigation practitioners—people who are working in the field, especially countries with more need,” Coughlin said. “The effects of climate change are going to be felt more severely in underdeveloped nations that don’t have the resources to change as rapidly as the United States. But, can anyone use it? Of course. Researchers already are using it. A lot of different people are using it.”...

The "blue marble" shot from Apollo 17