It’s a shame to read that Canadian climate research will likely continue to go unfunded, meaning the demise of the decade-old Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. This research entity has been working on studies related to climate change such as the melting arctic, the consequence of permafrost thaw, and the pattern of drought in the praries. The Foundation has a mandate that runs through 2012, but it hasn’t received any funding since the Conservative government took charge in 2006. Without any funding, it will likely shutter its doors this year.

It’s concerning that science continues to be censored in areas of atmospheric research and global change. Assessing and understanding the trends and impacts of climate change should have no political bias, as the consequences affect everyone. Such a research network fosters larger science of an interdisciplinary and collaborative nature that follows no agenda and that cannot be swayed by politics. Perhaps it’s time for more of a global entity for research and science on this topic, taking advantage of the work of the Group on Earth Observations and facilitating coordinated global research efforts.

Programs to create detailed maps of marine areas that identify use by humans, habitat and natural resources, along with allocated space for fishing, recreation, shipping, oil and gas development and renewable energy production are on the rise.

The marine spatial plan gives communities the tools to define their environmental, economic and social goals to minimize conflicts among users and to maximize benefits. President Obama directed 22 U.S. federal agenices to develop a framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning back in June and the number of programs are multiplying. The effort addresses both ocean coasts and Great Lakes resources.

There was a one-day symposium this past Saturday about marine spatial planning at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Learn more about the AAAS symposium on the subject, including details on presenters, in this press release.

Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), expressed an interest in creating a National Climate Service when she took office nearly a year ago, and this week that plan moved closer to reality with the formal outline of the Climate Service and the launch of a new Climate.gov website.The site contains a ClimateWatch magazine with features that describe the impact of climate change, a global climate dashboard and educational materials that are designed to help citizens understand climate.

The proposed climate service would model the Weather Service, and would bring together hundreds of scientists and analysts that are now spread throughout NOAA. Administration officials said they hope to have the climate service up and running by Oct. 1, the start of the 2011 fiscal year. But meeting that deadline will require negotiating with Congress, employee groups and the Office of Management and Budget to work out the details.

In the president’s 2011 budget there’s a good deal of commitment to earth observation and climate change monitoring and modeling. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been allocated $2 billion ( 58 percent more than this year’s budget) for a decade-long project to launch earth observation satellites that focus on collecting climate measures. At the heart of this is a mass restructuring of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). There’s also a strong commitment to earth observation and earth sciences at NASA, much of it climate-related.

NASA has made a $600,000 commitment to build a grid-based approach for the modeling of climate change. The move toward a software-as-a-service approach will free up resources and provide greater access for researchers to explore global temperature rises and the impacts of increasing carbon emissions.

Parabon Technologies won the award to build out the new system, using their Frontier Grid software that pulls together unused computing capacity of NASA’s estimated 80,000 desktops to create a large computational grid. This approach will take advantage of NASA’s own computing capacity, but doesn’t overrule tapping private grid computing capacity of public providers in the future.

Read more about this project in this story in ComputerWorld.

The U.S. military has been at the forefront of sustainability practices, particularly in the renewable energy sector, as military base self efficiency is seen as a strategic advantage, and this self reliance speaks to greater energy security. Now, the Pentagon is factoring in climate change into their Quadrennial Defense Review, realizing that the dramatic effects of climate change will create instability and cause conflict.

The report requires each military installation to complete a climate change assessment. According to the report, there are more than 30 U.S. bases that are threatened from sea level rise, and others face threats from severe heat and fire conditions.

The move to a more proactive engagement in assessing the risks will provide opportunities in the geospatial community to analyze and assess the contributing factors, and to help develop adaptation plans. With mandated assessments, the military stands to be at the forefront of applying technology to the problem. Organizations of all sizes will benefit from the tools and methodologies that arise from these exercises, and those contractors that win new work in this sector stand to take the lead in the ongoing need to measure, monitor and manage global change.

Read this story from The Hill for more details.

The Securities and Exchange Commission made a ruling yesterday that requires all public companies to warn investors of any serious risks that they face due to global warming. The agency in the past has required disclosure of financial and legal requirements of other environmental challenges, but this is a sweeping ruling that ushers in a whole new era of global awareness as related to the interface between the economy and the environment.

“The S.E.C., on a party-line 3-2 vote, issued “interpretive guidance” to help companies decide when and whether to disclose matters related to climate change. The commission said that companies could be helped or hurt by climate-related lawsuits, business opportunities or legislation and should promptly disclose such potential impacts. Banks or insurance companies that invest in coastal property that could be affected by storms or rising seas, for example, should disclose such risks.”

Read more about this ruling in this story in the New York Times.

With this step of protecting investors against this risk come increased needs to assess and monitor global-scale changes as well as the changes within the holding of individual companies spread across broad geographies. This ruling sets in motion an entirely new level of utility for geographic information system investment within large organizations, where they’ll need to inventory assets and plug into global change models to understand the impacts on those assets.

A report has recently been published on, “Tools for the Understanding of Spatio-temporal Climate Scenarios in Local Planning: Kimberley (BC) Case Study.” The lead author of the study, Dr. Olaf Schroth works at the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP) at the University of British Columbia. This group specializing in landscape visualization, environmental perception, public land management processes and sustainable landscapes.

“The research question of this explorative case study asks how multi-dimensional navigation, defined as the combination of spatial, temporal and thematic navigation, can facilitate the understanding of complex climate change impacts and adaptation and mitigation options. The results show that multi-dimensional navigation facilitated the spatio-temporal understanding of climate-related scenarios in this case study. Users successfully applied multi-dimensional navigation to select individual perspectives and to compare climate change risks over time. Particularly important was the opportunity to explore alternative scenario options which gave users a scope of action.”

The research was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF, in collaboration with the City of Kimberley, and the Columbia Basin Trust (CBT).  The full report can be downloaded here.

Now that COP 15 is over, with one of the only commitments made toward Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD), the move is on to map and monitor forests. GIS has long played a role in forest measuring, assessment, monitoring, planning and management. With the embrace of REDD by the international community, and the commitment of such heavy technology hitters as ESRI and Google to the task at hand, 2010 is shaping up as a watershed year for geospatial technology adoption.

Just think of all the developing countries that will receive a geospatial jump-start through their preparations for REDD. With the foundation of their forestry assessment and monitoring systems in place, they then can begin to apply these tools to biodiversity and conservation goals as well as the improvement of the lives of citizens through analysis of social, economic and environmental factors.

There is a growing awareness of the role that GIS and remote sensing will play in adapting to climate change. Here’s a nice story from Fortune Magazine writer Marc Gunther that illustrates the kind of coverage that GIS can expect to garner in the coming year.

Google has a high geospatial profile in Copenhagen. The announcement of their forest monitoring system, named Earth Engine, is getting a lot of press coverage. Google is synonymous with cutting-edge technology these days, and their pledge to provide the system for free to tropical countries to monitor their forest programs means there’s no competition.

I have no doubt that Google has a well-developed solution for forest monitoring given their technology and academic partnerships. It’s good to have the boost in awareness to all things geo with Google’s high-profile presence.

Google discusses future applications for Earth Engine to “enable scientists, policymakers, and the general public to better monitor and understand the Earth’s ecosystems.” It sounds like the Digital Earth vision is alive and well at Google, and living in the Cloud.

This technical announcement, along with the policy announcements in Copenhagen, have made this a watershed event for the geospatial marketplace. The policy announcements have elevated the importance of geospatial tools to monitor ecosystem services, and Google has raised expectations regarding the availability of free and open data, modeling and analytical capabilities. If Earth Engine lives up to the hype for scientific-grade analytical capabilities, it could put a serious dent in the market potential for geospatial tools and services in the emerging carbon accounting market. And yet the market has enormous potential at all levels of government and in all industries.

I think it’s another case of Google priming the pump for all geospatial players. There will be plenty of work to go around.