This volume teaches readers how to sort through the vast mountain of climate and environmental science data to extract actionable insights. With the advancements in sensing technology, we now observe petabytes of data related to climate and the environment. While the volume of data is impressive, collecting big data for the sake of data alone proves to be of limited utility. Instead, our quest is for actionable data that can drive tangible actions and meaningful impact. Yet, unearthing actionable insights from the accumulated big data and delivering them to global stakeholders remains a burgeoning field. Although traditional data mining struggles to keep pace with data accumulation, scientific evolution has spurred the emergence of new technologies like numeric modeling and machine learning. These cutting-edge tools are now tackling grand challenges in climate and the environment, from forecasting extreme climate events and enhancing environmental productivity to monitoring greenhouse gas emissions, fostering smart environmental solutions, and understanding aerosols. Additionally, they model environmental-human interactions, inform policy, and steer markets towards a healthier and more environment-friendly direction. While there's no universal solution to address all these formidable tasks, this book takes us on a guided journey through three sections, enriched with chapters from domain scientists. Part I defines actionable science and explores what truly renders data actionable. Part II showcases compelling case studies and practical use scenarios, illustrating these principles in action. Finally, Part III provides an insightful glimpse into the future of actionable science, focusing on the pressing climate and environmental issues we must confront. Embark on this illuminating voyage with us, where big data meets practical research, and discover how our collective efforts move us closer to a sustainable and thriving future. This book is an invitation to unlock the mysteries of our environment, transforming data into decisive action for generations to come.

In response to the call for actionable and collaborative solutions-oriented research for sustainability, this collection of essays provides insights into the multi-layered challenges that underlie this fast-emerging field. It offers the reader a deeper understanding of the myriad local avenues where knowledge is co-produced to meet the grand challenge of our times—‘transformation to sustainability’. Situated within a wide variety of research settings in the global North and South, the contributions here variously probe how actionable science emerges (or fails to emerge) in this process. From diverse perspectives, they ruminate on various research practice topics, including how to reconcile scientific understanding with normative action, how to acknowledge and integrate participant knowledge in research, and how to handle potential negative impacts of actionable science. In examining these rarely reflected-upon questions, the book provides valuable, empirically-based insights into research practice, and will be useful for scholars and educators working with transdisciplinary research design and practice.

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for-and in many cases is already affecting-a broad range of human and natural systems. The compelling case for these conclusions is provided in Advancing the Science of Climate Change, part of a congressionally requested suite of studies known as America's Climate Choices. While noting that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never closed, the book shows that hypotheses about climate change are supported by multiple lines of evidence and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. As decision makers respond to these risks, the nation's scientific enterprise can contribute through research that improves understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change and also is useful to decision makers at the local, regional, national, and international levels. The book identifies decisions being made in 12 sectors, ranging from agriculture to transportation, to identify decisions being made in response to climate change. Advancing the Science of Climate Change calls for a single federal entity or program to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responses to climate change. Seven cross-cutting research themes are identified to support this scientific enterprise. In addition, leaders of federal climate research should redouble efforts to deploy a comprehensive climate observing system, improve climate models and other analytical tools, invest in human capital, and improve linkages between research and decisions by forming partnerships with action-oriented programs.

Part I of this report is a synthesis that highlights eight selected themes, each of which relates to diagnoses, recommendations, and important lines of debate or inquiry. Part II describes the diagnoses and 39 recommendations from the eight working groups.

"Today, about 98 percent of scientists affirm that climate change is human made, and about 2 percent still question it. Despite that overwhelming majority, though, about half the population of rich countries, like ours, choose to believe the 2 percent. And, paradoxically, this large camp of deniers grows even larger as more and more alarming proof of climate change has cropped up over the last decades. This disconnect has both climate scientists and activists scratching their heads, growing anxious, and responding, usually, by repeating more facts to 'win' the argument. But, the more climate facts pile up, the greater the resistance to them grows, and the harder it becomes to enact measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for the inevitable change ahead. Is humanity up to the task? It is a catch-22 that starts, says psychologist and climate expert Per Espen Stoknes, from an inadequate understanding of the way most humans think, act, and live in the world around them. With dozens of examples, he shows how to retell the story of climate change and apply communication strategies more fit for the task."--Publisher's description.

This volume, the second in the Lectures in Climate Change series, covers the full array of climate impacts and adaptation measures. It has been brought together by friends and colleagues of Dr Martin Parry, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 assessment on impacts and adaptation. The writers are experts in this field and have been lead authors in many of the IPCC assessments and other major publications.Lectures in Climate Change is a unique combination of written text plus electronic slides that together comprise an informative and up-to-date set of presentations. This second volume, entitled Our Warming Planet: Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation, covers areas of climate impacts related to climate science, methods and approaches, sectors, regional and national studies, and policy and practice.The volume comprises topics such as current and future challenges of climate change, global assessments, downscaling, community-based adaptation, impacts on biodiversity, food systems, water resources, and cities. Research from across the world is presented on making science actionable through assessments, early warning and early action, communicating climate risk, documenting the uptake of adaptation on the global front, and transformation towards systemic resilience.Included with this publication are downloadable electronic slides and accompanying notes of each lecture for students, teachers, and public speakers around the world to be better able to understand and present climate change impacts and adaptation.

The global scientific and policy community now unequivocally accepts that human activities cause global climate change. Although information on climate change is readily available, the nation still seems unprepared or unwilling to respond effectively to climate change, due partly to a general lack of public understanding of climate change issues and opportunities for effective responses. The reality of global climate change lends increasing urgency to the need for effective education on earth system science, as well as on the human and behavioral dimensions of climate change, from broad societal action to smart energy choices at the household level. The public's limited understanding of climate change is partly the result of four critical challenges that have slowed development and delivery of effective climate change education. As one response to these challenges, Congress, in its 2009 and 2010 appropriation process, requested that the National Science Foundation (NSF) create a program in climate change education to provide funding to external grantees to improve climate change education in the United States. To support and strengthen these education initiatives, the Board on Science Education of the National Research Council (NRC) created the Climate Change Education Roundtable. The Roundtable convened two workshops. Climate Change Education Goals, Audiences, and Strategies is a summary of the discussions and presentations from the first workshop, held October 21 and 22, 2010. This report focuses on two primary topics: public understanding and decision maker support. It should be viewed as an initial step in examining the research on climate change and applying it in specific policy circumstances.