Integrating federal research on global change and climate change

Wednesday September 5, 2012

Featured by USGS, a member of the U.S. Global Change Research Program

USGS boat launched during 2011 flood waters in Louisiana. Credit: USGS

The worst of the storm may be over, but Isaacs’s impacts on the Gulf coastline and the potential for inland flooding continue. While precipitation continues to affect states in the storm track, drought conditions persist in many other parts of the country.

Multiple USGS field crews from several states are recording high-water marks, collecting discharge measurements and obtaining water quality data in coastal and inland Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This information is important because it is used by the National Weather Service to issue flood warnings, and the data is also used by emergency responders and planners to mitigate current and future flood hazards. These crews are being augmented by USGS staff from the Georgia Water Science Center. As the storm continues to move, crews from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas remain ready to address flooding along the storm’s track.

USGS field crews have also begun retrieving the 170 storm surge sensors and 17 temporary real-time gages that were deployed in response to Hurricane Isaac in locations where the storm has passed. Data from these sensors networks will be uploaded to the USGS Hurricane Storm Tide Sensor Map. The sensors provide critical data for more accurate modeling and prediction capabilities and allows for improved structure designs and response for public safety. Read more

The USGCRP is looking to fill an Implementation Coordinator & SGCR Executive Secretary Position

Implementation Coordinator & SGCR Executive Secretary (Prog Specialist II)

The position provides an excellent opportunity for exposure to the organizational structure within the Federal government that supports global change research and application, as well as climate change experts across the Federal government. 

Under the direct supervision of the Deputy Director, and in close coordination with the Executive Director and the Program Planning & Implementation Lead, the incumbent will serve as the USGCRP Implementation & Management Coordinator, as well as the Executive Secretary for the SGCR. In this role, the incumbent will:

1. Provide administrative, project management, and program coordination support to ongoing implementation planning efforts.
2. Provide executive secretariat support for the SGCR.
3. Provide staff support to the Director and Deputy Director on special projects as needed.

Duties Include:

• Implementation Planning Coordination: Meeting coordination and retreat support, records management, project management support, and liaison functions.
• SGCR Executive Secretary: Meeting coordination, records and knowledge management, liaison functions, communications, event planning, and management briefings. 

The USGCRP is looking to fill a student intern position supporting the Global Change Information System (GCIS)

Student Intern

This position facilitates and carries out content and data organization tasks for the GCIS program within the USGCRP NCO. 

The position provides an excellent opportunity for exposure to the organizational structure within the Federal government that supports global change research and application, as well as climate change experts across the Federal government. 

In this role, under NCO staff guidance, the incumbent will: 

• Examine various components of the global change program, performing background research to identify existing and emerging datasets, papers, projects, people, etc., and assist in planning for the integration of said components into the GCIS from a content organizational perspective.
• Discover and transform available metadata and augment with additional metadata as needed for adequate integration into the GCIS. This may involve automated work applying or augmenting tools and also manual text editing to match the existing format of that information to the necessary format.
• Identifies key concepts and topics of the relevant components and tags appropriate concepts and relationships between entities and integrate those components into the GCIS.  This may involve web-based research, browsing research papers, and/or communicating directly on behalf of the GCIS project with authors, program managers, and agency data center personnel.
• Assists with additional duties as needed.

Wednesday August 15, 2012

Featured by NOAA, a member of the U.S. Global Change Research Program

July 2012 temperatures in the United States.
Image credit: NOAA

New NOAA data released today show that: “The average global temperature for July 2012 was more than 1°Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, making it the fourth warmest July since record keeping began in 1880. July 2012 also marks the 36th consecutive July and the 329th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th-century average. The last July with below-average temperature was July 1976, and the last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.” Read more…