Ocean, Weather & Climate Forum 2022 Review- Part 3

This article is the second in a three part series. If you have not read the first installment then I recommend that you do that before continuing here, see:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/ocean-weather-climate-forum-2022-review-nathan-heazlewood/ and https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/ocean-weather-climate-forum-2022-review-part-2-nathan-heazlewood

Highlights from presentations (part 3)

Abigail Fitzgibbon from Esri spoke about the impact of climate change on agriculture. It is interesting and concerning that this type of planning is already necessary. As Abigail mentioned during her presentation:

“15 degrees Fahrenheit warming in parts of the USA if we don’t to anything to curb climate change in the next 30 years.” “Corn may no longer be viable unless crops are shifted North”?

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To understand the implications of sea level rise and coastal inundation Keith VanGraafeiland outlined the approach that Esri have been working on using data from NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration . There is a large volume of data to process so:

“to understand coastal functions we use a series of raster functions, the functions are light-weight, process only pixels that are visible on your screen or in your display without creating persistent intermediate files”?

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Craig McCabe from Esri expanded on Keith's presentation to demonstrate multiple methods of visualising the coastal inundation data. One of the most interesting visualisations from the forum was the 3D Webscenes of the output data including using 3D avatars to provide a very engaging and understandable indication of the depth of flooding that will occur and can be demonstrated for an individual person's home or business. This will be critical for communicating this message to the public. As Craig put it:

“we can create additional information products, actionable information about how to prepare certain communities about coastal inundation”?

Mark Gilbert from Esri demonstrated how GIS can be applied to mitigate and plan for the worst affects of climate change. He stated:

“one of the great things about this workflow is that it uses online resources so it could be repeated just about anywhere in the world”?

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Fernleaf provides services to simplify understanding and planning for climate change by using ArcGIS and data from NOAA to create apps, processes and visualisations for decision makers 'out of the box' and by augmenting this with expertise about this topic. James F Fox and Kim Rhodes highlighted the importance of this with the statement:

“to build resilience we need not only data, not only software platforms but also business processes”?

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George McLeod from Old Dominion University gave a visually stunning presentation about the study that he and his colleagues are doing regarding coastal flood hazards. George made one statement that resonated with me perhaps the most from this entire conference:

“What I see as our mandate as people that create geovisualisations is to tell the story of coastal flooding and sea level rise in as many ways as we possibly can. There is no one way to tell the story. The story might hit one person in one way and it might hit another person in another way, so why pick just one channel.”?

NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration is leading a highly collaborative effort to restore reef systems. This highlights one of the key points that I took away from the OWC Forum about the importance of agencies working together. As Megan Fraser mentioned during her speech:

“This is a NOAA led initiative… as implementation manager really my day to day is to work alongside all of these partners and to understand the work that they do in their organisations and make sense of how that fits the overarching goals of the mission, so really a lot of data, a lot of numbers, a lot of ArcGIS Online.”?

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METOC Officer Monica Killoran from the US Navy presented results of a study into Sea Level Variability. Sea Level Rise is a concern, but this is also exacerbated by Sea Level Variability (SLV), which is essentially multiple other factors that can combine to cause significant (if temporary) changes to sea level. These changes can be a threat to life as well as infrastructure (such as naval bases). As Officer Killoran identified:

“Results from San Diego and La Jolla sea level variability (separate to tides) can be as much as 2-3 feet”

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Carlos Collins from Synoptic Data, a Public Benefit Corporation presented tools to deal with situations such as weather affecting wildfires. Carlos indicated that it was important to:

"visualise real-time data in real-time situations”

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Crystal Egger and Kathryn Prociv presented the services of their company Monarch Weather & Climate Intelligence? . They provide meteorological analysis at large scales for industries including insurance. It is interesting to me that the insurance and finance sectors are taking a greater interest in climate change and how tools such as GIS can help them to adapt their services to the challenges that this raises. Crystal highlighted the concerns when she stated:

“these brilliant meteorologists that had been there for decades, they would talk about the weather patterns and they would say ‘we have never seen anything like this, especially at this time of year…’ and that’s when I knew that the climate is really changing. We saw the impact of climate on people and capital.”

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Citizen Science GIS & Geo Explorer Labs provides opportunities for students and educators to work on community projects to get 'real-world' experience working with GIS. Several students presented their projects to what would undoubtedly be an intimidating audience of senior professionals (but they did very well). It is always great to hear about this type of work from students.

“we owe much of our research to the support from the local residents for guiding our understanding of the flood risk”

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John Bright, MA, RPA, GISP, EMT Bright presented a set of tools that he has developed to process data that is collected during marine magnetic surveys. This process generates a huge amount of data, as John says:

“we are not just working with a magnetic sensor and because it is underwater, we have to be able to position not just in space but in space through the water in which it is moving, so the device ends up being integrated with a whole bunch of other sensors”

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Thank you

Finally I would like to thank the good folk at Esri and the other attendees at the Ocean, Weather and Climate Forum for being such fine hosts and welcoming the lone kiwi at this gathering and sharing such valuable insights with me. I will endeavour to spread the word back home.