Weather & Climate Summit to Include Session on Climate Security

Jan 12, 2015 - Jan 15, 2015 | Glen Gerberg Weather and Climate Summit
Breckenridge, Colorado
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This year’s Glen Gerberg Weather and Climate Summit in Breckenridge once again features some notable climate scientists, including James Balog, who has documented the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and Dr. Richard Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center. As in past years, the sessions will be webcast live, enabling the general public to listen and even to ask questions online.

The annual conference, set for Jan. 12-15 in Breckenridge, aims to foster dialogue between television weathercasters and meteorologists from top U.S. and Canadian markets and leading scientists and researchers. Along with technically oriented sessions on new weathercasting tools, the conference always features a healthy dose of climate reality, and this year is no exception.

On tJan. 12, Dr. David Titley, of Penn State University, will give a presentation on Climate Change and National Security. Titley, a retired Navy admiral, will cover the history of climate change as seen within the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Navy, including the greatest challenges to national security that arise from climate change and in particular, the associated changes in the Arctic.

“Climate change is about people, about water, and about change itself. Understanding the rate of climate change, relative to the abilities of both humans and ecosystems to adapt is critical,” Titley wrote in a short abstract for the conference.

The Jan. 13 sessions focus on the 2014 hurricane season with a presentation Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center, as well as information on new satellite tools for short-term forecasting.

On Jan. 14, it’s back to climate and ice with James Balog, who has long documented the Arctic’s dwindling ice cap. Balog founded the Extreme Ice Survey to show the impacts of climate change with the photographic study of glaciers. The images provide a “smoking gun” for climate change, visual evidence that audiences young and old can understand.

Following Balog, Dr. Jim White will talk about Arctic ice loss, sea level rise and coastal impacts. According to White, the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere means the planet is already committed to far more climate change, not only in our lifetimes, but into our children’s lifetimes as well. Based on analyses of ice cores, White will also take a look at the concept of abrupt climate changes, which could test humankind’s capacity to prepare and adapt.

The final day of the conference includes a winter weather workshop with The Weather Channel’s Dr. Paul Kocin and a final session on climate with Dr. Peter Gleick on the risks of climate change and extreme hydrological events. Gleick, an environmental scientist with the Pacific Institute, says the hydrologic cycle is so closely tied to weather and climate systems that some of the most serious social challenges around human-induced climate changes are water-related.

The full agenda is online here, and you can bookmark this web page to find links to the live-streamed sessions. You can also follow the @wxcsummit Twitter feed for timely updates.