[Cross posted at the Global Adaptation Institute News.] Reporting from Durban, with contributions from Ian Noble watching from the web. In the morning I joined the Climate Communications Day. Attendees were mainly environmental journalists. It is part of a continuing process to assist journalists, especially those from developing countries, to understand both the process of climate change and the state of the negotiations. After all, what society will hear mostly comes from the media, not scientists directly. ...

[Cross posted at the Global Adaptation Institute News.] Development Seed published today an interview we made about the climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa. We discussed the importance of open data in the climate mitigation and adaptation movements. The interview also highlights how the Global Adaptation Index is a groundbreaking tool that utilizes open data to help countries adapt to climate change and other global forces: ...

[More or less a transcription of the speech I gave today] Thank you very much for the invitation to join the Kick-off of the Water Hackathon. The topic at hand is extremely important. Water is essential, yet billions of people face aggravating challenges with water quality, quantity, or even basic access to it. The challenge here is to help solve these real identified problems with pragmatic software-based solutions. And I know, we know, that we can make great contributions. We, participants, as many as we are, we are not alone, as you can see. This event has the support of the World Bank, NASA, governments, Universities and companies around the world. Why? Because it’s working. The growth of this movement is based on its success, which I see is based on 3 ingredients. ...

Washington was struck today by an earthquake. It was not strong and there was almost no damage. Yet, it was in the capital of the USA, a somewhat unexpected and particular place. And it was my first. Now that I see nothing serious happened, I can say it was fun. I was writing an email and I felt like there was construction going on one or 2 floors above. We are on floor 11 of 12. Like a second later I felt like someone had dropped a very heavy something above us. I felt a bit dizzy. Then I realized something wasn’t normal. I looked over the window in the far corner and I saw the reflections of light on the windows of the building opposite to us. They were also shaking! It was an earthquake! ...

My favorite fun facts about the Sun, from the top of my head: *If you had a shield or something to hide from the light, you could actually go inside the atmosphere of the Sun without being fried. The density of the atoms up there is ridiculously low. But if you are not lucky and you catch one of those wanderer super hot atoms you’ll be instantly disintegrated :) ...

This is another quick idea I came up some days ago. I´d love to program this, but got no time... can you help me? A parser to plot the profession breakdown on biographies of people in Wikipedia, along History. The point would be to see a graph that, over time, shows which professions were more dominant for people that went into History (or, quite different in the Internet era, those that are Wikipedia worthy). ...

Exactly three years ago I defended my PhD in Goettingen, Germany. Today is my birthday as Doctor. Around then I had then an offer to work at best place in the world in my field, which I accepted. I also had an invitation to interview with McKinsey and was drafted for the astronaut election process. It was a great moment. Today I am unemployed. So What? I am where I am because I chose so. Pursuing your goals is not easy, but no one told me it would be. Achieving what I have, from where I started was not easy. By all means. What I am doing now is a hard step I knew I had to do. A difficult decision two years in the making. I studied science because I love science. And Technology. But most of all, how these help people be better. I studied science all the way up to earn a PhD and then also worked at a satellite and rocket facility. But something was missing. Something so important it drove me off the official path: People. As amazing, challenging and interesting as my research was, it lacked connection with the real world, with people. ...

Last Friday the US State Department hosted its 5th Tech@State, where technologist and diplomats unite to pursue goals in education, health, and welfare worldwide. The topic for this year was Open Source Software. All sessions are available in Ustream. I would especially recommend the one by Maccon Phillips, Dr. Linton Wells and Jeremy Allison. The feeling is that the model has changed. It is not anymore about hiring a company to provide a closed product and give support until they stop providing service or a new one is needed. The model now is to open the data, let everyone access as much information as possible. Anyone can then build (open) products that the agencies can evaluate and use. Every agency has now the power to create such open competitions. Agencies are keen to use open source software, as they realize it has many more benefits and fewer problems. They typically hire a company to adapt the product and provide service. The extra mile comes when they liberate the improvements for everyone to use, when they adopt the winning apps on competitions, when everyone can be engaged in the innovation, and everyone benefits from it. ...

This [free as pdf] NAP book is a report from the 2008 NRC Board of Atmospheric Sciences workshop: “Progress and Priorities of U.S. Weather Research and Research-to-Operations Activities”. Despite the chaotic nature of Weather, scientist are currently able to measure (nowcast) and predict (forecast) weather with unprecedented accuracy. Almost certainty within hours, and maybe a week at best with 50% chance. But: Do we need to improve our capabilities? Can we? The report says yes. What can we do? Once we have the forecast of an impending weather event, are we acting accordingly upon predictions? The report says not really. The U.S.A. has the world´s most sophisticated and well-developed weather forecast infrastructure. The federal government also spends, annually, $5 billion in research and operations only in NOAA, and $6 billion for a dedicated agency on disasters (FEMA). Academia and private partners are also tightly involved. Only the generation of weather forecasts costs overall $5 billion annually, but its benefits are (quoted on the book as) 6 times the cost. Despite these impressive benefits on paper, there is much room for improvement. ...

The video above shows the map of the Sun from 2007 to 2010. The map calculates the image as if neither the Sun or the Earth rotated, leaving thus a black region that corresponds to the section of the Sun that can´t be seen from Earth. But they do rotate, so the black region shifts in time. The interesting bit is that the solar features remain in place. This allows us to see that certain features survive several months and are indeed recurrent. ...