19 March 2009
“Planetary Skin” Tool Aims to Improve Response to Climate Change
NASA, Cisco collaborate to integrate climate data, Web technology
Washington ― Every day, on and above Earth, millions of sensors collect vast amounts of data representing interactions among the planet’s systems of land, air, water and life. This is the kind of data needed to address the complexities of climate change or a move to a low-carbon-dioxide world economy, but gathering it is just the first step.
The next steps, barely possible given the state of information technology, involve integrating data from air- and space-borne and terrestrial instruments with computer models of climate, ecosystems and biological systems, then analyzing and reporting results that can be scaled to the needs of nations and communities.
On March 3, at a U.S. Climate Action Symposium in Washington, NASA and Cisco Systems, a $39 billion, U.S.-based designer and seller of networking and communications technology and services, announced a research and development (R&D) collaboration to build such a system.
Over the next several years, according to a Cisco statement, Planetary Skin will provide a common platform for integrating data; scientific, economic and risk models; data processing and communication networks; and visualization and collaboration tools.
“We’re trying to convert the geophysical and biological data products into information that can be used by policy and management decisionmakers,” Steve Hipskind, chief of the NASA Ames Research Center’s Earth Science Division in California, told America.gov.
“We don’t envision Cisco or NASA as operators of the Planetary Skin infrastructure,” Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio, managing director of the Cisco Strategy and Innovation Group’s climate change practice, told America.gov. “We are focused on the R&D elements, the technical elements, and in the future we hope that capability will be replicated and scaled globally.”
Cisco already is working on the program with the United Nations, multilateral development banks, businesses, international government agencies, universities, policy groups, nongovernmental organizations and foundations.
SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS
Other efforts are under way to integrate the range of maritime, atmospheric, air-borne and space-based data around the globe. (See “Benefits Arise from Global Effort To Link Earth Observation Data.”)
The largest international program is the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), a 10-year (2005–2015) plan to integrate data from widely distributed Earth-observing networks and make the information available to decisionmakers and other users.
More than 70 nations participate in the partnership to incorporate existing and new sensors into a global public infrastructure that generates comprehensive, timely environmental information.
The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations ― a voluntary organization of 72 governments and the European Commission and 46 intergovernmental, international and regional organizations ― coordinates the GEOSS effort.
“One of the things we’re attempting to do with the Planetary Skin project,” Lipskind said, “is to make progress on linking the system of systems.”
MITIGATE AND ADAPT
At the World Economic Forum in 2009, public- and private-sector leaders outlined three requirements for mitigating and adapting to a changing climate:
1. Countries must set targets for CO2 emissions that effectively put a price on carbon.
2. Developed and developing countries must provide large-scale ($350 billion to $450 billion) predictable and sustainable financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies.
3. A globally trusted mechanism must be created for measuring, reporting and verifying CO2 emissions.
“The day is not yet here but is probably not all that distant when carbon will need to have a worldwide price,” Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, told symposium attendees in a keynote address. “This would accomplish two things: reverse the incentive to cling to cheaper high-carbon sources of energy and create the opportunity for the kind of large financial flows needed.”
Under their agreement, NASA and Cisco will develop the Planetary Skin as an online collaborative platform, making the data available to the public, governments and businesses.
“When you’re talking about a global collaboration in which all nations have to do their part in terms of mitigation and adaptation, you need to be able to monitor and verify [CO2 emissions],” Castilla-Rubio said.
Planetary Skin, he said, will be able to help meet that requirement.
NASA and Cisco will launch Planetary Skin with a series of pilot projects, including one called Rainforest Skin that will be prototyped in 2010. According to scientists, rain forest destruction adds CO2 to the atmosphere and keeps it there, contributing to global warming.
The effort will target tropical deforestation around the world and explore how to integrate a comprehensive sensor network. It will also examine how to capture, analyze and present information about the changes in the amount of CO2 in rain forests.
In the meantime, Lipskind said, “a lot of research needs to be done.”
Getting regional and local forecasts from the global circulation model ― a mathematical model of the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans ― and connecting that information through biological or ecological forecast tools created at NASA Ames, he added, “will require significantly more supercomputing capability than we currently have.”
More information about Planetary Skin is available on the project Web site.
Additional information about the Ames Research Center’s Earth Science Division is available on the NASA Web site.
