Recently an Environmental Data Analytics Researcher practicing in the Centre for Environmental and Agricultural Informatics, United Kingdom was awarded highly prestigious National fellowship for one of her projects tackling Climate change.
Climate change nowadays, an imposed a long due influence on almost every sector possible. And has even offered a room of opportunities to people while they attempt to find solutions for the troubles caused due to climate change. We are facing a deep triple crisis: climatic disturbances, biodiversity loss and severe pollution of all natural resources.
Another year and a new set of Hopes:
2022 can truly be a historic milestone to render environmental sustainability as this year marks 50 years to the fruitful United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) 1972 where it all begin.
Pathways undertaken to reach congruity with the needs of this planet and its beings are often more diverse than can be anticipated. And any further achievement of our development goals critically depends on the probability of limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C of pre-industrial times (seems impossible now).
Any different method suggested? The awarded project by the name ‘Reframing non-CO2 climate mitigation approaches to limit global warming’, has dared to bring all the human activities contributing to global warming under the same framework. These include short as well as long-lived greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), aerosols, deforestation, reducing albedo, land-use changes etc., but based on their ability to raise or reduce the temperatures over different timescales.
This will all be done using web-based tools, the Researcher explains: “My aim is to help decision-makers turn that ambition into action with accurate tools, in particular for climate pollutants other than carbon dioxide, which have been less accurately represented in many analyses.”
“The programme distils our understanding of the climate system into easy-to-use tools which can help with real-world decision making. By putting all greenhouse gases on an equal footing, trade-offs can be assessed in sectors such as agriculture, which generates methane and nitrous oxide emissions, but contributes little to carbon dioxide emissions.”
Data Analytics and regaining the power to mold the future:
Data science tends to deal with the great volumes of data sieved through modern tools and techniques to detect unnoticed patterns, deduce some significant information, and then implement difficult decisions based on predictive models built using complex machine learning algorithms.
The current world is a manifestation of human curiosity but with bare regards to its future needs. Adaptation and mitigation are the only possible ways out, covered under various schemes at local and National level, yet we fail to achieve as intended.
This happens as the scales we need to map climate risks and opportunities have become obsolete and stagnant unlike the newer threats. Our oceans remain least explored and under faulty zonation, we are immersed in emissions trading while there are discrepancies in its calculation, planning for extreme weather events seem bedeviled with different difficulties in different landscapes and what not.
We lack in basic information at times like accuracy for ” where”, “when” and “how much”.
Then only the policymakers will be able to devise and above all implement better transition strategies proving to be socially and economically just as well as maximise synergies across sectors. For this, data powered innovation has become necessary.
If used in the right ways, this field can not only leverage operational inadequacies but also help innovate strategies.
For instance, early signs of deforestation can be …….