Month: June 2015

Growing Food on a Changing Planet: NASA Brings Food Security Down to Earth at Expo Milano 2015

by Ellen Stofan

The theme of Expo Milano 2015 is Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. When I visited in mid-May, even on a weekday, the Expo was packed with visitors from all over the world. At the USA Pavilion, with its beautiful and inspiring vertical farm wall, visitors received welcoming messages from President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry on the challenges and opportunities of feeding a growing population with a changing climate.

Caption: The USA Pavilion is a 35,000 square foot space within Expo Milano's 3.6 million square foot sustainable “smart city.” The building is a multi-level experience including a massive vertical farm that is harvested daily. Image courtesy of www.usapavilion2015.net
Caption: The USA Pavilion is a 35,000 square foot space within Expo Milano’s 3.6 million square foot sustainable “smart city.” The building is a multi-level experience including a massive vertical farm that is harvested daily. Image courtesy of www.usapavilion2015.net

I spoke to an enthusiastic audience at the USA Pavilion about the role NASA plays in ensuring food security. From our unique vantage point of space, and as the nation’s leader in developing cutting-edge capabilities, NASA plays a critical role in supporting agriculture at home and around the world.

California is suffering from a multi-year drought, consistent with what we expect from our changing climate. This is a concern for all of us in the United States, as California has a $46 billion dollar agricultural economy that helps feed this country. With agriculture using over 80% of the water in California, management of the water supply and reducing agricultural use of water is a priority that NASA is helping with. NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission has revealed the extent of the depletion of water from aquifers, while other NASA instruments have helped to quantify potential snowpack melt that is critical to estimating the state’s water budget. NASA scientists are in partnership with the private sector, the state of California and federal agencies to directly address drought-induced water resource challenges in agriculture. One NASA project uses Landsat and MODIS data to provide statewide maps of land being left fallow, helping state officials understand potential changing water demands. Another NASA project is using a combination of space and ground-based data to help farmers reduce water usage by about 30% for certain crops, showing a potential path forward to reduce agricultural water use. These examples illustrate the multiple and unique uses of space-based data in quantifying and managing water resources, to benefit our economy and our nation.

Caption: NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan delivers a keynote address “Growing Food on a Changing Planet: How Space Science Research Benefits Life on Earth” at the USA Pavilion on May 11 during Expo Milano 2015. Image courtesy of http://www.expo2015.org
Caption: NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan delivers a keynote address “Growing Food on a Changing Planet: How Space Science Research Benefits Life on Earth” at the USA Pavilion on May 11 during Expo Milano 2015. Image courtesy of http://www.expo2015.org

With over 2 billion people living on less than $2 per day, rising food prices can contribute significantly to hunger and malnutrition around the world, increasing global insecurity. NASA’s SERVIR program, a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, helps countries around the world utilize NASA data to help in response to natural disasters, manage resources including agriculture, and protect biodiversity. Through SERVIR, NASA data are helping Kenyan tea and coffee producers to reduce crop losses due to frosts, and helping African countries assess the potential effects of drought on their crops. Better food security around the world means better security for the United States.

Visitors to the Expo were surprised and energized to hear what NASA is doing, and to discover that NASA data are free and available to the public. We use the same tools and techniques to study our planet as we do other planets in our solar system. We bring NASA scientists, engineers and technologists together with citizen scientists to use the unique global view of this complex planet and gather the data we need to grow our economy through better resilience to disasters, managing our water resources and enhancing food security.

The author is NASA’s Chief Scientist.

NASA releases global climate change projections

By Ellen Stofan, NASA Chief Scientist

Earlier today, I presented newly released, high-definition climate assessment data, the latest product from the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), a big-data research platform within the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Center at the agency’s Ames Research Center.

The release of this NASA data was a key aspect of the Climate Services for Resilient Development initiative, a new $34 million partnership announced by John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

I’ve reposted the blog from Dr. Holdren and Brian Deese, a senior advisor to the President, which outlines the administration’s announcement.

To view the Five-Year Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2014 video, visit: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4252

For my slide presentation at today’s event, click here: 060915 Stofan Climate Services for Development Visualization.

Empowering Developing Nations to Boost Their Own Climate Resilience

Brian Deese and John Holdren

This blog was originally posted on the White House blog on June 09, 2015, 09:45 AM EDT

Today, at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the United States and partners from around the world are delivering on President Obama’s commitment to help empower developing nations to boost their own climate resilience.

The Climate Services for Resilient Development Partnership, initially announced by the President at the UN Climate Summit in New York last September, will provide actionable science, data, information, tools, and training to developing countries that are working to strengthen their national resilience against the impacts of climate change. The Partnership is launching with more than $34 million in financial and in-kind contributions from the U.S. government and seven other founding-partner institutions from around the world: the American Red Cross, Asian Development Bank, Esri, Google, Inter-American Development Bank, the Skoll Global Threats Fund, and the U.K. government.

Climate change threatens our entire planet. The impacts of climate change – including more intense storms and storm surge damage, more severe droughts and heat waves, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and biodiversity losses – are already being experienced in different ways around the world. These impacts can be particularly damaging in developing countries, which often lack the resources and technical capacity to effectively prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change.

The Partnership that is launching today recognizes that no single entity is capable of addressing the vast needs for improved climate services across the world’s developing nations – and that needs may vary from country to country and region to region. Communities, governments, and decision makers on the ground need a range of tools and services in order to effectively plan for the future. These may include projections of future sea-level rise that help planners identify places to build and develop that are out of harm’s way, to maps that overlay population, infrastructure, and climate data to help decision makers target resources to areas of greatest vulnerability.

To start, the new Partnership’s initial efforts will focus on developing and applying scalable, replicable climate services in Colombia, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. Over time, these services will expand to the broader subregions represented by these three countries: the Andean region and Caribbean; East Africa and the Sahel; and South Asia and Southeast Asia. Throughout each step of the process, the Partnership will work hand-in-hand with stakeholders and entities on the ground, ensuring the utility and long-term sustainability of services provided.

The work of the Climate Services for Resilient Development Partnership builds on extraordinary progress already being made both internationally and here in the United States. For instance, the U.S. government already supports a number of successful programs that this new partnership will leverage and augment, including the Climate Services Partnership, NOAA’s International Training Desks and International Research and Applications Project (IRAP), NASA and USAID’s SERVIR program, and the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP). Likewise, there are many institutions and programs in focus countries that the partnership will build on as a core component of its efforts.

Here at home, the Obama administration is continuing to support communities across the United States as they strengthen their resilience to the impacts of climate change – including by supporting climate resilient investments, planning for climate related risks, and providing tools and information for decision-makers.

We are thrilled to launch this historic partnership with entities from around the world and to continue working together to ensure our planet, a shared and treasured resource, remains strong and resilient for generations to come.

Brian Deese is Senior Advisor to the President. John P. Holdren is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.