Administration Climate Research Articles

Climate policy shocks and crowdfunding success of renewable technology campaigns

AbstractThis study uses Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord as an exogenous policy shock and investigates its impact on crowdfunding outcomes. We find that this major policy change negatively affects the funding success of renewable technology campaigns. Mechanism tests suggest that social trust and availability bias transmit the influence of climate policy shock on crowd backers' decisions. Further analyses indicate that Biden's consequential policy reversal recovers the investors' support towards renewable technology. Overall, the Trump administration's climate policy shock induces significant shifts in the consumption preferences of small investors and incurs negative externalities upon renewable technology in crowdfunding markets.

Biden's climate agenda: The most ambitious ever, or overlooking key technological bottlenecks?

The White House claims that Biden's Climate Agenda is “the most ambitious ever.” While the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Jobs Act (IJA) indeed do earmark billions of dollars for clean energy technologies, they also direct substantial sums of public money to conventional energy and fossil fuels. In comparison, energy storage technologies and projects—which are critical to renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles—are set to receive a much smaller amount. This marks a potentially substantial bottleneck that could eventually derail the administration's climate ambitions. By triangulating three sources of data: policy documents and funding commitments, trends in emissions reductions, and innovation, this article finds that Biden's Climate Agenda might not be as ambitious as the White House claims.

Statistical prediction of typhoon-induced total accumulated rainfall in the Western North Pacific using typhoon track similarity indices

Typhoons can cause significant water problems if not effectively managed, but predicting typhoon-induced rainfall remains difficult due to the complexity of these storms and their interactions with land. In this study, we developed a new statistical prediction model for typhoon-induced accumulated rainfall (TAR) based on the principle of similarity in Asia. Our model utilizes track data from the Regional Specialized Meteorology Center, Tokyo, and precipitation data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center. This study focused on precipitation from 1979 to 2020 and developed the TAR calculation for typhoons, evaluated track similarity, and applied intensity correction to optimize the model output. After comparing the performance of the fuzzy C-means clustering and polygon methods, we used the triangle mesh area index to select the most similar typhoons. Further, the optimal ensemble number was selected based on the minimum root-mean-square error. Finally, we applied translation speed intensity correction to four selected cases, demonstrating significant improvements in TAR prediction compared to previous studies.

Biden’s Climate Office and Paris Agreement

Abstract. The subject of the analysis is the initiatives of the new US administration in the field of global efforts in the field of climate change and national climate policy. The author analyzes in detail the main provisions of the Biden administration's climate policy and provides a forecast of the impact of this policy on the nature of the ongoing negotiations on the Paris Agreement. The article analyzes fundamentally new issues, including putting the climate agenda at the forefront of the national domestic and foreign policy and security policy of the United States. The article examines the organizational innovations and management decisions implemented by the Biden administration to implement a new type of climate policy, and their connection with personnel changes in the administration and management of leading federal ministries and departments, which are expressed in a sharp increase in the climate competence of senior personnel. The forecast of areas of greatest activity of the US in negotiations under the Paris agreement and formed for Russia in this context, risks and challenges. The study of possible retaliatory measures from the Russian side is given

Above‐normal Atlantic basin hurricane season forecast

Between three and six major hurricanes with winds of 111 miles per hour and greater could whip across the Atlantic basin during what is forecast to be an above‐normal 2011 hurricane season, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center (NOAA CPC). Including those, there could be a total of 6–10 hurricanes with winds of 74 miles per hour or greater and 12–18 named storms with winds of 39 miles per hour or greater during the hurricane season, which officially begins on 1 June and lasts for 6 months, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco said at a 19 May briefing. There is a 70% likelihood for these ranges occurring, according to NOAA.

Ambushed: The Kyoto Protocol, the Bush Administration's Climate Policy and the Erosion of Legitimacy

The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 164 states and is now fully operational. However, the Bush administration's repudiation of the Protocol combined with the weakness of the targets raise a confronting question for students of legitimacy: is it possible for a regime to be legitimate but ineffective in solving the problem it is designed to address? I argue that effectiveness is an important component of the Protocol's legitimacy but that the parties have been reluctant to make an issue of effectiveness during the early phase of the Protocol's operation. However, the legitimacy of the Protocol is likely to wane, and the chronic international legitimacy crisis of the Bush administration's climate change policy is likely to become acute, as a result of poor performance. I conclude by suggesting what might constitute significant and timely adaptation that might resolve the US's chronic legitimacy crisis and the Protocol's waning legitimacy.

Carbon entrapment field testing

The U.S. Department of Energy currently is field‐testing geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide, to determine whether this technique could be a viable option in the “tool kit” of the Bush administration's Climate Change Initiative.In the first major field experiment to entrap carbon gases in the United States, researchers are monitoring the movement of a plume of about 2,100 tons of carbon dioxide that the agency purposely injected into an underground geologic formation near Hobbs, New Mexico. The amount injected is comparable to the daily emission from an average‐sized coalfired power plant.

Committee issues report on Bush Administration's Climate Science Plan

The Bush administration's draft strategic plan for the federal government's Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) represents a good start, but it requires substantial improvements to the science, and to the program management, according to a review issued by the U.S. National Research Council on 26 February.CCSP Director James Mahoney promised an improved final plan—likely in April—which incorporates many of the concerns raised by the NRC and by others who have commented on it. The draft, released on 11 November 2002, is a first attempt to chart a course for the CCSP That program incorporates the decade‐long, Congressionally‐mandated U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the administration's Climate Change Research Initiative.

Draft climate plan issued

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program issued a draft strategic plan for the Climate Change Science Program on 11 November. The plan, which provides a synthesis and update on the Bush Administration's thinking and direction on dealing with climate change, includes sections on the administration's Climate Change Research Initiative and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, as well as dozens of lists of climate science research needs and potential research products.The plan was released in advance of a major Washington, D.C. workshop for scientists and stakeholders on 3–5 December, which will examine the draft plan.

A High-Precision Fast-Response Airborne CO2Analyzer for In Situ Sampling from the Surface to the Middle Stratosphere

Two in situ CO2 analyzers have been developed for deployment on the NASA ER-2 aircraft and on stratospheric balloons. The ER-2 instrument has had more than 150 flights during 21 deployments from 1992 to 2000, resulting in a dataset with nearly pole-to-pole coverage that includes data from all seasons in both hemispheres except austral summer. In-flight calibrations show that the typical long-term (i.e., flight-to-flight) precision of the instruments is better than ±0.1 ppmv. The flight standards are traceable to standards held by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory. The balloon instrument has had eight balloon flights since September 1996, providing the first in situ observations of CO2 above ∼21 km. In addition, the balloon instrument has been flown on board a Cessna Citation II aircraft for sampling between the surface and 10 km. In this paper, the instrumentation and calibration procedures for both instruments are described in detail. An intercomparison of the two instruments during the Photochemistry of Ozone Loss in the Arctic Region In Summer (POLARIS) project showed that, on average, the instruments agreed to within 0.05 ppmv.

An inverse modeling approach to investigate the global atmospheric methane cycle

Estimates of the global magnitude of atmospheric methane sources are currently mainly based on direct flux measurements in source regions. Their extrapolation to the entire globe often involves large uncertainties. In this paper, we present an inverse modeling approach which can be used to deduce information on methane sources and sinks from the temporal and spatial variations of atmospheric methane mixing ratios. Our approach is based on a three‐dimensional atmospheric transport model which, combined with a tropospheric background chemistry module, is also employed to calculate the global distribution of OH radicals which provide the main sink for atmospheric methane. The global mean concentration of OH radicals is validated with methyl chloroform (CH3CCl3) observations. The inverse modeling method optimizes the agreement between model‐calculated and observed methane mixing ratios by adjusting the magnitudes of the various methane sources and sinks. The adjustment is constrained by specified a priori estimates and uncertainties of the source and sink magnitudes. We also include data on the 13C/12C isotope ratio of atmospheric methane and its sources in the model. Focusing on the 1980s, two scenarios of global methane sources are constructed which reproduce the main features seen in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory (NOAA/CMDL) methane observations. Differences between these two scenarios may probably be attributed to underestimated a priori uncertainties of wetland emissions. Applying the inverse model, the average uncertainty of methane source magnitudes could be reduced by at least one third. We also examined the decrease in the atmospheric methane growth rate during the early 1990s but could not uniquely associate it with changes in particular sources.

Nations Unlikely To Meet Even Short-Term Goals Of Climate Treaty

The Clinton Administration's Climate Change Action Plan will fall far short of its goal for stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions, according to critics from environmental groups. But the White House defends its approach to global warming as a unique partnership between industry and government. The plan, unveiled by President Clinton last fall, aims to limit US emissions of greenhouse gases to no greater than 1990 levels by 2000. It relies on mostly voluntary programs and increased support for renewable energy sources to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and other gases that contribute to global warming. The Clinton Administration's plan relies for the most part on pledges by industry and utilities to cut emissions. It will save energy and save businesses money while creating jobs.