Traditionally, computational models designed to simulate climate change and its associated impacts (climate science models, integrated assessment models, and climate economics models) have been developed as standalone entities. This limits possibilities for collaboration between independent researchers focused on sub-­?problems, and is a barrier to more rapid advances in climate modeling science because work is not distributed effectively across the community. The architecture of these models also precludes running a model with modular sub -­? components located on different physical hardware across a network.

In this workshop, we hope to examine the possibility for widespread development of climate model components that may be developed independently and coupled together at runtime in a “plug and play” fashion. Work on climate models and modeling frameworks that are more modular has begun, (e.g. Kim, et al., 2006) and substantial progress has been made in creating open data standards for climate science models, but many challenges remain.

…

A goal of this workshop is to characterize issues like these more precisely, and to brainstorm about approaches to addressing them. Another desirable outcome of this workshop is the creation of an informal working group that is interested in promoting more modular climate model development.

Attend to develop your capacities in:

• Systems thinking: Causal loop and stock-flow diagramming.
• Leadership and learning: Vision, reflective conversation, consensus building.
• Computer simulation: Using and leading policy-testing with the C-ROADS/C-Learn simulation.
• Policy savvy:  Attendees will play the “World Climate” exercise.
• Climate, energy, and sustainability strategy: Reflections and insights from international experts.
• Business success stories: What’s working in the new low Carbon Economy and implications for you.
• Build your network of people sharing your aspirations for Climate progress.

Save the date.

Today’s installment tackles the atmospheric half life of CO2:

A common analogy used for CO2 concentrations is water in a bathtub. If the drain and the spigot are both large and perfectly balanced, then the time than any individual water molecule spends in the bathtub is short. But if a cup of water is added to the bathtub, the change in volume in the bathtub will persist even when all the water molecules originally from that cup have flowed out the drain. This is not a perfect analogy: in the case of CO2, there are several linked bathtubs, and the increased pressure of water in one bathtub from an extra cup will actually lead to a small increase in flow through the drain, so eventually the cup of water will be spread throughout the bathtubs leading to a small increase in each, but the point remains that the “residence time” of a molecule of water will be very different from the “adjustment time” of the bathtub as a whole.

Having tested a lot of low-order carbon cycle models, including I think all possible linear variants up to 3rd order, I agree with EPA – anyone who claims that the effective half life or time constant of CO2 uptake is 10 or 20 or even 50 years is bonkers.

This article explains why states and localities need to be full partners in a national climate change effort based on federal legislation or the existing Clean Air Act. A large share of reductions with the lowest cost and the greatest co-benefits (e.g., job creation, technology development, reduction of other pollutants) are in areas that a federal cap-and-trade program or other purely federal measures will not easily reach. These are also areas where the states have traditionally exercised their powers – including land use, building construction, transportation, and recycling. The economic recovery and expansion will require direct state and local management of climate and energy actions to reach full potential and efficiency.

This article also describes in detail a proposed state climate action planning process that would help make the states full partners. This state planning process – based on a proven template from actions taken by many states – provides an opportunity to achieve cheaper, faster, and greater emissions reductions than federal legislation or regulation alone would achieve. It would also realize macroeconomic benefits and non-economic co-benefits, and would mean that the national program is more economically and environmentally sustainable.

Some excerpts:

The current focus on the federal government as the means for managing climate change responses departs from the way Congress proceeded in the 1970s in response to environmental improvement needs. The “cooperative federalism” legislation of that period—the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, among others—did not federalize environmental law or create a federal environmental agency with plenary authority over rulemaking, program administration, permitting, and enforcement. Rather, it crafted a balanced compromise between state and federal authority borne of the practical need for institutional cooperation.

A national role is needed:

… a federal program, either through legislation or regulation, is necessary for several reasons in order to achieve a full level of national effort that addresses economic and energy needs. To begin with, a serious effort requires national goals for greenhouse gas emissions reduction to guide that effort. National goals cannot be set by states, whether they act individually or regionally. In addition, a serious effort to address climate change requires an economy-wide price on carbon through a cap and trade program or a national carbon tax that can only be achieved through federal action. A national program also is needed to prevent “leakage” or negative displacement effects — where reductions in emissions in one state are offset by corresponding increases in a second state with no cap or other regulatory program. Finally, because climate change is a global problem, because the United States is a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and because the United States is expected to play an international leadership role in addressing this issue, a national program is needed to give the U.S. a credible foundation for its negotiating position.

… On many issues (such as fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, greenhouse gas emission standards from motor vehicles and stationary sources, energy efficiency standards for appliances and equipment), federal rules applicable to the entire country will be more effective and efficient than the business-as-usual alternative–of climate change rules that can vary from state to state and no rules in other states.

However, states must also play a role:

Still, even with a strong national climate change program, the states will need to play a continued and growing role on climate change. This is so for at least seven reasons:

1. To increase the effectiveness of a federal climate change program, especially in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A great deal of climate change mitigation will need to occur in areas where the state (and local) governments have historic police power or economic development responsibilities …

2. To reduce the cost of the regulatory program for greenhouse gas emissions. …

3. To maximize the other benefits of greenhouse gas emission reductions. …

4. To provide a continued source of legal and policy innovations that could be employed at the state, regional, or national level. …

5. To prod and encourage continued improvement in the federal program. …

6. To check against possible federal regulatory failure. …

7. To foster environmentally sustainable economic development and enhance the likelihood that climate change legislation can be adopted. …

I think the compelling arguments here are #1 and #4. I think much of the progress on #1 may require regulatory change or deregulation as much as new regulation – the point being that existing regulations can be an obstacle to change, and we need a lot of change. We need experimentation, as in #4, because the scope of change needed is so extensive. Where states lack the power to predict the actions of their regulatory changes (or the will to make the needed analysis), evolutionary learning, with diffusion and imitation of successes, can fill the gap.

Dernbach et al. lay out a road map involving state implementation plans, mirrored after existing regulatory approaches, and including state control over allowance distribution. That’s an interesting idea, and might make it easier to solve some objections that arise due to the diversity of energy-economy mixes across states.

One thing this approach would enable is a fairly minimalist climate bill, focused on emissions pricing and free of much of the ancillary regulation that bloats current drafts to 900+ pages. Also, there would be an obvious complementarity: with a federal price on emissions, suddenly the benefit (public and private) of many state measures would be much clearer.

One thing I’d add is a market approach to #3. Command-and-control measures for capturing cobenefits don’t play well together. Why not carry emissions pricing a bit further, and replace local air and water quality regulations and the like with adaptive pricing as well? Then the whole system could be simpler and more flexible.

My slides are here as a PowerPoint show: Climate Science, Climate Policy & Montana (better because it includes some animated builds) or PDF: Climate Science, Climate Policy & Montana (PDF)

Some related resources:

Climate Interactive & the online C-LEARN model

Montana Climate Change Advisory Committee

Montana Climate Office

Montana emissions inventory & forecast visualization (click through the graphic):

Related posts:

Flying South

Montana’s Climate Future

Climate Progress has a first analysis and links to the leaked draft legislation outline and short summary of the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act. [Update: there's now a nice summary table.] For me, the bottom line is, what are the emissions and price trajectories, what emissions are covered, and where does the money go?

The target is 95.25% of 2005 by 2013, 83% by 2020, 58% by 2030, and 17% by 2050, with six Kyoto gases covered. Entities over 25 MTCO2eq/year are covered. Sector coverage is unclear; the summary refers to “the three major emitting sectors, power plants, heavy industry, and transportation” which is actually a rather incomplete list. Presumably the implication is that a lot of residential, commercial, and manufacturing emissions get picked up upstream, but the mechanics aren’t clear.

The target looks like this [Update: ignoring minor gases]:

This is not much different from ACES or CLEAR, and like them it’s backwards. Emissions reductions are back-loaded. The rate of reduction (green dots) from 2030 to 2050, 6.1%/year, is hardly plausible without massive retrofit or abandonment of existing capital (or negative economic growth). Given that the easiest reductions are likely to be the first, not the last, more aggressive action should be happening up front. (Actually there are a multitude of reasons for front-loading reductions as much as reasonable price stability allows).

There’s also a price collar:

These mechanisms provide a predictable price corridor, with the expected prices of the EPA Waxman-Markey analysis (dashed green) running right up the middle. The silly strategic reserve is gone. Still, I think this arrangement is backwards, in a different sense from the target. The right way to manage the uncertainty in the long run emissions trajectory needed to stabilize climate without triggering short run economic dislocation is with a mechanism that yields stable prices over the short to medium term, while providing for adaptive adjustment of the long term price trajectory to achieve emissions stability. A cap and trade with no safety valve is essentially the opposite of that: short run volatility with long run rigidity, and therefore a poor choice. The price collar bounds the short term volatility to 2:1 (early) to 4:1 (late) price movements, but it doesn’t do anything to provide for adaptation of the emissions target or price collar if emissions reductions turn out to be unexpectedly hard, easy, important, etc. It’s likely that the target and collar will be regarded as property rights and hard to change later in the game.

I think we should expect the unexpected. My personal guess is that the EPA allowance price estimates are way too low. In that case, we’ll find ourselves stuck on the price ceiling, with targets unmet. 83% reductions in emissions at an emissions price corresponding with under $1/gallon for fuel just strike me as unlikely, unless we’re very lucky technologically. My preference would be an adaptive carbon price, starting at a substantially higher level (high enough to prevent investment in new carbon intensive capital, but not so high initially as to strand those assets – maybe $50/TonCO2). By default, the price should rise at some modest rate, with an explicit adjustment process taking place at longish intervals so that new information can be incorporated. Essentially the goal is to implement feedback control that stabilizes long term climate without short term volatility (as here or here and here).

Some other gut reactions:

Good:

• Clean energy R&D funding.
• Allowance distribution by auction.
• Border adjustments (I can only find these in the summary, not the draft outline).

Bad:

• More subsidies, guarantees and other support for nuclear power plants. Why not let the first round play out first? Is this really a good use of resources or a level playing field?
• Subsidized CCS deployment. There are good reasons for subsidizing R&D, but deployment should be primarily motivated by the economic incentive of the emissions price.
• Other deployment incentives. Let the price do the work!
• Rebates through utilities. There’s good evidence that total bills are more salient to consumers than marginal costs, so this at least partially defeats the price signal. At least it’s temporary (though transient measures have a way of becoming entitlements).

Indifferent:

• Preemption of state cap & trade schemes. Sorry, RGGI, AB32, and WCI. This probably has to happen.
• Green jobs claims. In the long run, employment is controlled by a bunch of negative feedback loops, so it’s not likely to change a lot. The current effects of the housing bust/financial crisis and eventual effects of big twin deficits are likely to overwhelm any climate policy signal. The real issue is how to create wealth without borrowing it from the future (e.g., by filling up the atmospheric bathtub with GHGs) and sustaining vulnerability to oil shocks, and on that score this is a good move.
• State preemption of offshore oil leasing within 75 miles of its shoreline. Is this anything more than an illusion of protection?
• Banking, borrowing and offsets allowed.

Unclear:

• Performance standards for coal plants.
• Transportation efficiency measures.
• Industry rebates to prevent leakage (does this defeat the price signal?).

Current national emissions targets can’t limit global warming to 2 °C, calculate Joeri Rogelj, Malte Meinshausen and colleagues — they might even lock the world into exceeding 3 °C warming.

• Nations will probably meet only the lower ends of their emissions pledges in the absence of a binding international agreement
• Nations can bank an estimated 12 gigatonnes of Co2 equivalents surplus allowances for use after 2012
• Land-use rules are likely to result in further allowance increases of 0.5 GtCO2-eq per year
• Global emissions in 2020 could thus be up to 20% higher than today
• Current pledges mean a greater than 50% chance that warming will exceed 3°C by 2100
• If nations agree to halve emissions by 2050, there is still a 50% chance that warming will exceed 2°C and will almost certainly exceed 1.5°C

Via Nature’s Climate Feedback, Copenhagen Accord – missing the mark.

Pederson et al. (2010) A century of climate and ecosystem change in Western Montana: what do temperature trends portend? Climatic Change 98:133-154. It’s hard to read precisely off the graph, but there have been significant increases in maximum and minimum temperatures, with the greatest increases in the minimums and in winter – exactly what you’d expect from a change in radiative properties. As a result the daily temperature range has shrunk slightly and there are fewer below freezing and below zero days. That last metric is critical, because it’s the severe cold that controls many forest pests. There’s much more on this in a poster.

Not every station shows a trend – the figure above contrasts Bozeman (purple, strong trend) with West Yellowstone (orange, flat). The Bozeman trend is probably not an urban heat island effect – surfacestations.org thinks it’s a good site, and White Sulphur (a nice sleepy town up the road a piece) is about the same. The red line is an ensemble of  simulations (GISS, CCSM & ECHAM5) from climexp.knmi.nl, projected into the future with A1B forcings (i.e., a fairly high emissions trajectory). I interpolated the data to latitude 47.6, longitude -110.9 (roughly my house, near Bozeman). Simulated temperature rises about 4C, while precipitation (green) is almost unmoved. If that came true, Montana’s future climate might be a lot like current central Utah.

The figure above – from John W. Williams, Stephen T. Jackson, and John E. Kutzbach. Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD. PNAS, vol. 104 no. 14 – shows global grid points that have no neighbors within 500km that now have a climate like what the future might bring. In panel C (disappearing climates with the high emissions A2 scenario), there’s a hotspot right over Montana. Presumably that’s loss of today’s high altitude ecosystems. As it warms up, climate zones move uphill, but at the top of mountains there’s nowhere to go. That’s why pikas may be in trouble.

MT Field Guide