Went to the International Spaceflight Museum to hear a talk by Davee Commerce, otherwise known as Dave Taylor of the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL). I arrived early to be able to have a look around the museum, and to ensure I got into the sim early if it was going to be crowded.
The Spaceflight Museum is well laid out, with displays, models and information, as well as video and web links. Davee Commerce was already centre stage when I arrived, with large display board behind him.
The talk was extremely interesting, and covered the role of NPL, in trying to improve the data obtained from measurement on the land and in space, to improve our understand of global warming. Apparently, the Laboratory has developed much more accurate means of measuring radiation from the sun on the ground, and needs to be able to get these instruments into space in order to improve the accuracy (and reduce uncertainty) of data there too.
Davee gave some interesting background to the National Physical Laboratory, and explained that NPL is heavily involved in spaceflight, e.g. testing and calibrating satellites and components, and providing knowledge transfer services for the European GPS satellites called Galileo. Measurements from satellites are being used to help scientists model our climate and to predict the increase in global temperatures. The main concern about the information is that it should be accurate, with more consistency between missions.
"The cause of climate change in the last 50 years is "likely" to be anthropogenic (caused by man) in nature [International Panel for Climate Change 2000] but its impact is far from clear, " he continued. "Scientists like to be precise, and the term "likely" has a definition that gives us a clue about the data on which they depend. "Likely" equals 66-90 % probability."
One of the ways in which scientists try to make their data less uncertain is by overlapping results, to iron out the variations. Even so, there are large variations, due to the type of equipment currently available on satellites, which may be significant for our understanding of global warming. It was a surprise to me to learn that when measuring the light coming from the sun, approximately 25% of that predicted by our climate models appears to be missing, meaning that a larger part of the light than was thought is absorbed by the atmosphere before it reaches earth.
The TRUTHS project (traceable radiometry underpinning terrestrial and helio studies) involves using the same up-to-date equipment on a satellite to ensure that the data from space is as accurate as the data on the ground, which will enable the scientists to make better and more accurate models of climate, to help diagnose the nature and extent of global warming or cooling.
The NPL exhibit on the sim has more detail about missing sunlight, and there is a downloadable video podcast too.
"Another bonus of TRUTHS is that it will enable us to go back over historical data from many satellites and correct it to yield greater insights, since the effects we are looking for are small ones that build up over a long period of time," said Davee.
I asked Davee how long it would take to get the project off the ground, and he told me that there are talks going on now about that. I also asked why he had chosen to give his lecture in SL: "It is my belief that SL can be used for all kinds of scientific knowledge transfer: it's the richness of the interaction that can take place. We are going to build a more interactive exhibit that will help to explain the scientific principles behind climate research in a way that is more accessible than a scientific paper.
A clear convert to the wonders of SL, he mentioned some other advantages: "I only ventured into SL in early May and I hooked up with Kat and Troy of the Spaceflight Museum a month of so before it launched. It took me about a day to realise the potential. I attended a conference in SL that was taking place at Harvard, and immediately discovered that SL was better for networking with other viewers."
"If you chat during presentations in RL it's disruptive -- and people are more direct here. The other point is that it is possible to collaborate with people at a distance in SL. Nowadays science is very collaborative and international. SL helps support collaborations and its more environmentally friendly than travel."
I think everyone present enjoyed the lecture, and the chance to ask real questions, getting answers from a real live scientist. It is exactly the sort of event that I imagined when I wrote about the Cafes Scientifiques which have started in the UK. Here's hoping that this is the first of many such events.
