Exploring NOAA with Chief Scientist Dr. Sarah Kapnick

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Apr 15

Dr. Sarah Kapnick serves as the Chief Scientist at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which plays a critical role in understanding and predicting changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts. Bringing a unique mix of science and finance to NOAA, Dr. Kapnick's background includes a stint as a senior climate scientist at JP Morgan Chase, a leadership role at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and an early career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. She holds a PhD in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from UCLA and an AB in Mathematics from Princeton.

In our conversation, Dr. Kapnick touches on a wide range of topics, including NOAA's extensive work, the importance of resilience and adaptation in today's changing climate, and the challenges of planning for a future that deviates from past assumptions of a stable climate. Highlighting NOAA's efforts in supporting community resilience and innovation, she underscores the agency's commitment to aiding stakeholders in navigating the complexities of our evolving environmental landscape, emphasizing the critical need for investment and focus on adaptation for the remainder of the 21st century.

Episode recorded on Mar 13, 2024 (Published on Apr 15, 2024)

In this episode, we cover:

[03:08]: An overview of NOAA and its departments, focusing on climate, weather, ocean, and coasts
[05:16]: The six line offices within NOAA, including the National Weather Service and Oceanic Research
[09:26]: NOAA's management of marine resources and the Great Lakes
[12:18]: How scientific priorities are set within NOAA, driven by mission and funding
[15:06]: Kapnick's background in climate science and finance
[20:23]: The intersection of climate change and finance
[22:45] The need for bipartisan support for resiliency and adaptation measures
[31:13]: NOAA's role in funding and supporting coastal resilience and climate-ready fisheries
[36:34]: NOAA's focus on adaptation and resilience in response to climate change
[48:19]: Opportunities for startup innovation and government funding in adaptation and resiliency
[54:00]: The state of the world's ocean and atmospheric circulation, including AMOC slowdown
[59:17]: Climate change impacts on the Midwest and the variability of the Great Lakes

Cody Simms (00:00:00):
Today on My Climate Journey, our guest is Dr. Sarah Kapnick, Chief Scientist at NOAA. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and it's an agency of the US Federal Government within the US Department of Commerce. NOAA's mission is "to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, ocean and coasts, to share that knowledge and information with others and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources." Dr. Kapnick took on the role of chief scientist in 2022 after a year's stent in the private sector as senior Climate Scientist and Sustainability Strategist at JP Morgan Chase. to that, she was a physical scientist and deputy division leader at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, or GFDL, where her work spanned seasonal climate prediction, mountain snowpack, extreme storms, water security, and other climate impacts. She received a PhD in Atmospheric and Oceanic sciences with a certificate in leaders in sustainability from UCLA and an AB in mathematics with a certificate in finance from Princeton University.
(00:01:11):
And in between those academic stents, she spent two years as an investment banking analyst with Goldman Sachs. As her bio attests, Dr. Kapnick brings a unique blend of science and finance into her role at NOAA. We hit on a number of topics including an introduction of NOAA and its various departments such as the National Weather Service and the National Ocean Service. We spend a lot of time talking about resiliency and adaptation and where we as a country and a society are in the recognition of what is likely to be a significant area of investment and focus for the remainder of the 21st century. Dr. Kapnick reminds us that just about everything we know was built and created with the assumption of a stable climate and that assumption unfortunately, is no longer valid. We talk about the role of NOAA in helping stakeholders plan for a less stable future and we talk about what is actually going on with our oceans today and how that impacts extreme weather and our atmosphere. Lastly, she also shares more about NOAA's efforts and supporting communities in need as well as in supporting innovation around resiliency. But before we start, I'm Cody Simms.
Yin Lu (00:02:35):
I'm Yin Lu.
Jason Jacobs (00:02:36):
And I'm Jason Jacobs and welcome to my Climate Journey.
Yin Lu (00:02:42):
This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (00:02:47):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and all the ways people like you and I can help. Dr. Sarah Kapnick, welcome to the show.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:03:02):
Thank you for having me.
Cody Simms (00:03:04):
Alright, let's just jump right into it. What is NOAA?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:03:08):
NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and it's an agency that sits under the US Department of Commerce.
Cody Simms (00:03:15):
I, in doing my very in-depth research on, I believe Wikipedia, saw a fun fact that it sits under the Department of Commerce because of some feud between Richard Nixon and the at-the-time Secretary of the Interior over Vietnam war policy and Nixon said, you don't get NOAA, I'm going to give it over here to commerce. Is that true?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:03:37):
That is the lore. At the time, they thought that it should sit under interior because there's other aspects of fish and wildlife on land that we have with managing fisheries in the ocean and the Great Lakes. But actually I would say now with everything that NOAA does it makes complete sense that we're under Department of Commerce.
Cody Simms (00:03:59):
We are going to get to all of that because you have a fascinating background with a blend of atmospheric and oceanic science as well as practical finance and bringing the two together, which I think is interesting that NOAA actually sits under the Department of Commerce because so much of what you're doing, I'm guessing, is predicting impacts of the world from a climate perspective, a weather perspective, and a lot of those predictions go to feed: "What are we going to do about it from a financial perspective?" Would that be an accurate way to think about many of the consumers of your data?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:04:36):
That's the consumers of that data from NOAA and that's also my entire reason for my career has been trying to be at that intersection to make sure that we're getting science into the hands of decision makers for the decisions that need to be made around weather climate, fisheries, the ocean.
Cody Simms (00:04:50):
And NOAA has, it's a big agency, like 12,000 people somewhere around there and it looks like almost 7,000 scientists and engineers. That's a lot of horsepower.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:05:00):
We're half of the Department of Commerce
Cody Simms (00:05:02):
Really. Wow. When I think of NOAA, I think of the National Weather Service, I think of the National Ocean Service. Are those the big pieces in NOAA or are there many other things as well that I should be thinking about?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:05:16):
So we have six line offices total, and so you're thinking National Weather Service where you get your weather forecasts from National Ocean Service that does the information of where the sea bottom is, the bathymetry maps, anyone who's a sailor along the coast, they often have our maps that have the little NOAA seal on the corner looking at the coastline. So we produce that, but there's also all the information of how is sea level rise changing or varying in the tides. We also have National Marine Fishery service, which both does research on fisheries but also is the regulator of fisheries. We have one of the most sustainable fisheries in the world because of the management practices that they have in place. There's also the Office of Marine and Aviation operations, which is one of the eight uniform services and those are the brave men and women that fly directly into hurricanes to be able to take the measurements we need of hurricanes to understand how they're developing, how they're changing it.
(00:06:10):
It improves our forecasts. They also fly into atmospheric rivers and pollution events. They also man the ships that we have that do our ocean going measurements and also Great Lakes measurements of what's happening with the fisheries, but also what's happening in the ocean. And then we also have the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. So it's a strong research arm that is focused on research of all of the work that we need to be able to go into operations across all of NOAA. That's actually where I spent the majority of my career was in oceanic and atmospheric research at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics laboratory, which is where climate models came from. And we also have the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service, which is where operational weather satellites lie. And also all of the data collected at NOAA is housed through various parts of NESDIS for short, including our National Center for Environmental Information, which is where a lot of people go to get our observations of long records of what is happening in weather and climate and different measures. Most people are aware of the monthly reports that they put out on temperature that says in context what is temperature over the last month and how does that contextualize over our 175 year record.
Cody Simms (00:07:28):
To be needing to be experts in, from what I'm hearing, everything from space technologies to deep ocean technologies to weather technologies clearly requires a significant breadth of expertise. And I'm guessing quite a bit of cross collaboration with many other government agencies and departments as well.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:07:49):
Absolutely. And we didn't even get into space weather. We also had the Department of Space Commerce sits within NOAA and has situational awareness of where all the satellites and the debris and information is over space and within the National Weather Service we also actually have a space weather forecast office, which is forecasting space weather, so weather that's coming off of the sun, which then affects magnetic fields, which then create drag on satellites but also affects the grid because it creates pulses and electricity, which can be problematic for the grid. It can be problematic also for GPS systems. So we have weather from the sun all the way down to what is happening at the bottom of the sea floor mapping it and where are the fish at the bottom there. And so it requires all this science, but I'm very fortunate that we have amazing scientists across the agency that are very collaborative and they flow through me through our science council and give me advice on anything I need is I need to synthesize all the science of the agency and our mission is science first, then service. So we're supposed to provide that science to other people and advice, so it's across the federal government, it's the public, it's whatever stakeholders, decision areas that need it. And last is stewardship. So with the ocean, we are stewards of the ocean, making sure that we have a healthy ocean for years to come and generations to come.
Cody Simms (00:09:12):
On that last piece, does NOAA actually manage natural resources? Do you have direct areas of land or programs that are affecting the physical world that you are responsible for?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:09:26):
The resources being fisheries. Most people when they hear fisheries, they also just think fin fish, the ones with fins, but it also includes crustaceans, it includes understanding what's happening with algae, understanding mammals, turtles, and it's not just the ocean, it's also the Great Lakes. I always make that point of Great Lakes. I'm originally from the Great Lakes region and when most people when they think of NOAA, they just think of ocean, but we're including Great Lakes is also under our purview.
Cody Simms (00:09:54):
And in your role as the chief scientist, you said you're responsible for coordinating the activities across these scientists and understanding the outputs, I would assume being the conduit of that information to the rest of the federal government and the populace at large and maybe bi-directionally back the other way. Is that how I should interpret your role?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:10:16):
Yeah, science and program direction for the agency and I put out an annual report on what is our strategic research guidance memorandum of important parts that we need to communicate of the research and the funding that we need through the budget process every year. And it highlights key areas of inquiry, both the long-term inquiry that we've been doing for decades, but also where the emerging scientific areas that we need to move into. I also put out an annual report of our science report, which is an annual report of the science of the agency, the snapshot of what happened in the last year, but then it's also giving the scientific advice when anyone needs it across federal government when they need access to our science, need us to advise from our science from our agency on different activities. I manage all of that and then also I'm very media facing, talk to the media about the research about the science. We also actually have a lot of work with the private sector and understanding how we work with the private sector, especially being under the Department of Commerce, but because of the value of the data and information, there's niche to that and making sure that there's access to that, there's equitable access to it, and then also forming key public-private partnerships in areas where we really need innovation.
Cody Simms (00:11:32):
What's something that most people probably don't know or appreciate about the work of scientists in the federal government?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:11:42):
I don't think most people are aware of how passionate the scientists are in the federal government and how they are driven by the mission of our agency and being able to do the science that they need to create and support and desire to have that inquiry, that discovery and be able to advance the science. We just have such a passionate and hardworking workforce in that area and they're really driven by making sure that they can provide the public with the information they need no matter what.
Cody Simms (00:12:18):
How do scientists decide what should be worked on? What's the path for a given problem to get appropriate scientific attention?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:12:28):
It depends on what level of a scientist you are. So the junior scientists are coming in and they're working with people more senior that are setting certain areas of research agenda and depending on where they are and where the funding type is, they either have a very specific project or they're doing inquiry to try and advance understanding in a broad area, we are setting those research agendas by our mission. Part of it also comes from appropriations to do certain things for NOAA, our science is also geared towards making the science operational, so providing operational weather forecast or information in the ocean or being able to advance our modeling, our forecasts, our predictions, our projections, which means being able to know what's going to happen in the next minutes, hours, all the way out to decades and centuries. Being able to advance all of that and pushing forward on the science to be able to do that. And so depending on where they are, it can either be a very specific project towards advancing those problems or there can be broader areas with more flexibility, particularly for the really hard problems with more uncertainty. There's a lot more exploration of the problems that need to take place, but fundamentally our work is around whether climate, ocean, fisheries,
Cody Simms (00:13:46):
The congressional appropriation was an interesting part because the way I understand it, Congress approves the budget and decides, hey, this thing is going to get funding or this thing that used to have funding isn't going to have it anymore. To some extent, that also helps drive the agenda as does in many cases getting the right people appointed into roles and if you end up with people not appointed into certain roles, even if there's funding for something, there may be no one to actually direct the work to do that thing or it feels like those are somewhat unspoken also forces that help direct how work gets done inside an agency like NOAA. Am I thinking about that the right way?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:14:24):
The political leadership shapes some of it and can shape some of it, but vast majority of the scientists in the workforce are career employees that are part of the federal government. Much of the science that we also do, we don't see the results of that science for months, years, even decades. For some of the work that we do, particularly on the really hard problems that we develop for certain areas, there's a steadiness that occurs that you can't change that really quickly. That is part of the importance of some of the science that takes place at the federal laboratories that we have across many different agencies is that sometimes the scientific inquiry, particularly for really tough problems that we need to solve takes a really long time.
Cody Simms (00:15:06):
Shifting gears a little bit, looking at your own background, you've had some work that you have done that has happened that has been very timely in terms of what you were working on when you were working on it. One, as I understood it, very early in your career you were working on a bond program that ultimately ended up getting impacted by Hurricane Katrina and then two, you spent a lot of your PhD time working on snowpack in the west right as the west was entering into this massive drought period. Share with us a little bit about, I don't know if you were anticipating problems well or if you were to some extent, you can't be lucky by these horrible tragedies, but you had some things that lined up in terms of the work you were doing that ended up being very timely in terms of the importance of it. In retrospect, how do you view those times in your life?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:15:58):
Part of it is you do some science and you are interested in a problem, but then the world is changing around you and requires the science and so it changes the science, but it also changes what you focus on. I finished my undergraduate in mathematics, which was theoretical mathematics at Princeton University, but I also got a certificate in finance and I was exploring applied mathematics. I went to Princeton real thinking I wanted to be a theoretical mathematician, and then once I did theoretical math, I realized I didn't want to do that. And so I sometimes joke that I overcorrected towards finance and climate science, really real world problems of math. So I did some research on hurricanes and hurricane formation and catastrophe risk. That combination, I was fascinated by what the future of climate change meant and how it could impact financial markets.
Cody Simms (00:16:54):
This was before or after Al Gore inconvenient truth, popular awareness of climate change
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:17:00):
Before, not many people are aware, so our Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is actually on Princeton's campus. It was placed there because of the early development of computers of computing from Johan von Neumann in the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton. It was seen as one of the areas for computational mathematics to take place was development of weather models, development of climate models. So the laboratory was there and some of the theoretical mathematicians were like, well, if you like the applied stuff, this is super mathy. You should learn how to model weather and climate. If you want to do a real world problem, why not study the earth? And so I started to study that information and learn about climate change from the leaders in understanding climate change. Suki MBE was the one who developed the first model. He won the Nobel Prize actually recently for the development of the first model.
(00:17:55):
So I was learning from him and other people that were huge in the field of climate change and understanding climate and understanding what was emerging and what was happening. And so I'm learning science from them and the same time that I'm taking finance courses at Princeton and learning about financial markets and learning about how one thinks about the economy and the macro economy. And so I'm learning about climate change and how it's going to completely change the world at the same time that I'm learning about what the current economy looks like and how it's structured and how financial markets are made. And also taking classes with experts on what happened with the Argentinian debt crisis, which is also happening and how emerging markets respond to different shocks. And so I'm looking at climate, I'm looking at finance. I'm like, these two are together and they're going to be together, particularly if this climate thing explodes in the way that the scientist was explaining to me.
(00:18:49):
And so I wanted to have a career in climate finance because I thought that those were two interesting problems and the only way they intersected was financial institutions. So then I went and I worked at Goldman Sachs in financial institutions and was able to work on catastrophe modeling and trying to work on one of those bonds, having discussions about how I thought hurricanes were affected by climate change and wasn't in their model at the same time that then Katrina came through in New Orleans really showed me that the financial markets were not thinking about climate change in the way that they needed to. And I was told by my boss, why are you focused on this? You're a finance person. And it really drove me to go get my PhD back in climate because I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my career being a climate person that could inform these things. Not being a finance person.
Cody Simms (00:19:44):
Frequent listeners of the pod will know that we just had Kim Stanley Robinson, the sci-fi writer and author of Ministry for the Future on the show. I would argue in that book he makes the case that our political economy isn't set up today to solve these big problems of climate change and that ultimately you have to change the money to get the world to make the change it needs to make. I'm totally spoiler alerting the book, but that's kind of what the book is about. And I'm curious, as you've worked at the intersection of climate change and finance, do you believe that finance drives the right outcomes or finance reacts to outcomes that are happening?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:20:23):
I think both
Cody Simms (00:20:24):
The world's not as simplistic as we would like, is it?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:20:27):
There's so much nuance in it and part of the reason I studied snowpack and water in the American West was I saw water is a critical component of society and so I thought climate change as it affects water will be very tangible for people to be able to respond and water is also an area where it's almost free in most parts. The US and the way that utilities operate and water's been structured and also the rights historically. And so it's a fundamental market issue too that might transform or change in ways that we don't yet fully know as we deal with water crises. And so finance is one part of society that was built on a climate that no longer exists. As the climate evolves and as people see the changes and experience the changes, finance and other parts of society are going to transform in response to it. And what I often say about climate science as well is that it gives us an understanding of what the future holds in a way that no other forecasting does. It's based on physics, there is uncertainty, but we have a very good idea of what's going to happen in the coming months, years, decades. So we can take that information and adapt it to understand what do we need to do now in various parts of society, finance being one, it gives us this crystal ball that we need to take
Cody Simms (00:21:51):
Such a good way to frame the problem that the world was built on the assumption of a stable climate and the climate is no longer stable and thus the assumption that the world was built on are no longer valid. So what does that mean for everything we know? It's all likely changing around us, which is scary but also creates opportunity for people depending on how you try to approach the problem. I think on that note, we know there's opportunity today to help the world with that transition to help move to a clean energy future, to help move toward technologies that the world is hungry for that aren't going to further exacerbate the problem. On the flip side, what do you think the world will do over the coming decades around increasing resiliency in the face of an increasingly unstable planet?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:22:45):
All sectors of society need to respond to the climate challenges that they're facing and adaptation to build resiliency will be different in each one based on their needs. For example, one that I am working on as chief scientist is we are working with the American Society of Civil Engineers to ensure that they have the science that they need to inform how they can potentially write building codes. So historically building codes are based on historic data. We are gatekeepers of that historic data and put out the information every year and then they've used it and adapted it to understand what the risks are in the past. That was under the static assumption that if you just looked in the past, what's going to happen in the future. If you go around the country and you talk to people that have that data, particularly when I talk to emergency managers or I talk to mayors, they'll rattle off the statistics of how they're seeing things they've never seen before or in Louisiana people are like the worst rainfall events and worst flooding we've had the seven worst are in the last 10 years in our entire record.
(00:23:52):
What does that mean and how do we respond to that? For the built environment that responds to some of this information, there needs to be guidelines of how one builds for the future if you want to be able to build infrastructure that can either be built to last years and decades into the future or even for the finance people in your group. I also think about efficient investment towards also retrofitting, so there is some uncertainty of what path we're on and how emissions change in the future so you can also build for the next two decades with the expectation that you might need to invest again to be able to retrofit for further resilience. And so thinking in these new ways about how to build and how the world is changing is just fundamental to changing how engineers think and how they create their standards by which they build so that they don't have damages.
Cody Simms (00:24:43):
At MCJI work with a lot of early stage startups and one of the things we always try to help startups do is understand what are your existing validated assumptions, what are the things you think you know about your business and you have data that says yes, in fact this is true because those are the things that fundamentally you should be marching toward and building on top of what I'm hearing you say is there's a whole exercise to be done to go around in the bigger world around us and say, what are the things that we thought were validated that actually are no longer validated and how do we find that information? What is the skillset needed to go poke those holes and shine the light for people on those areas? That is a very specific unique effort and a specific skillset to be able to know how to ask the right questions.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:25:31):
We're starting to talk about those people as the climate translators, the people that can translate the climate information into actionable direction that any sector or person needs to use. I would say the very sophisticated scientist or technocratic person will say, okay, you just need the data of NOAA or the data coming out of the intergovernmental panel and climate change is information. You just need to take that data and put it in a report and then anyone can use it, but you can't just put the data out there and hope the people are going to find it and use it and apply it. One of the things that we've been working on the last few years is making data accessible in different ways to different users. And so thinking about our user communities, we have the climate resiliency toolkit. We can go on and download climate information, but also there's case studies of how people have used climate information to build adaptation.
(00:26:28):
We now have heat.gov which NOAA led along with c, d, C, around what is heat your risk right now, what's the forecast, what's the seasonal outlook, but also what is the expectations of heat long-term? And then it also has those plans of who is most exposed to heat, how do people respond, how do urban planners respond to it? How do buildings respond to it? How should your community manager think through cooling centers or plans to get elderly people that are isolated to a cooling center? How do you get the word out and do that depending on the need and the people in the audience, we have various different ways that we're trying to reach them and some of them traditionally is putting the data out in these websites, but then there's this whole stakeholder engagement that needs to take place to be able to do that as well.
(00:27:16):
And NOAA, we are structured to be able to do that. We're in the states and all the territories. We have our climate centers, caprisa centers that are across the nation that are supposed to be making sure that they're getting access to NOA data information for their decisions. We also convene and do training with every state has its own climatologists, so there are state climatologists that are out there that are helpful to give support for the funding that we give particularly around coastal resilience, around conservation restoration. Increasingly as we put government grants out, and we saw this with our funding from BIL and IRA funding, we also provide technical assistance, so we have all those places that people can go on a website that they can find the data, but that often isn't enough. They also need technical assistance, so we also have people that are there to help through how do you do the calculations that are needed and how do you create your technical plan and then also giving that support for those types of plans to do that
Cody Simms (00:28:15):
Work. I'm come back to the funding for sure. I have some questions on that digging into, you used the phrase the stakeholders that we work with, the stakeholders that your scientists engage with in the private sector and outside of noaa. I'm assuming these stakeholders are often risk managers at big companies, they are architects, they are city planners in the government, folks like that that are trying to understand the future of a decision they're making today, what it might mean 20 years from now, what's the world going to look like? Are those interactions happening a lot when they're building something, they're thinking that far ahead. I always hear one of the magical things about Disneyland is when you build a ride, you have to plan that it needs to continue to work for 50 years. And I'm hearing this same sentiment from you that NOAA can be a resource to help folks ensure the future viability of projects that they're doing today.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:29:07):
Yes, and by stakeholder, really that's anyone who pays taxes in the US is getting our data and information and those engagements that we have with all the different people with corporates, but communities, states, regional entities, community organizers, architects, engineers, those are happening through various channels. We have all these different channels of which we distribute our information and do those engagements. Something that I also haven't mentioned yet that increasingly is becoming important and I'm saying that as I'm actually looking out over the bay, I'm in Miami right now for work in the coastal resilience basin and what's happening along the coast in the ocean. We also have something called SEA grant. You've probably heard of land grant universities. SEA grant is within NOAA and it is funding for coastal regions to do the research, to do the engagement, to then also be able to pull together the projects that build resilience adaptation and that is on our salty coast, but also along the Great Lakes and our different SEA grant offices deal with the problems in their states. Some of them are really focused on sea level rise and erosion. They also have aquaculture, so how you grow fish or how you grow shrimp or algae. They also have projects around sea level rise around ports, anything that interacts with the ocean, the SEA grant is able to have federal funds but then also brings together the state, the local governments, the universities towards doing the research but then also doing the actions around things along the coast.
Cody Simms (00:30:45):
Let me unpack a little bit more on some of the funding that NOAA provides both today and potentially in the future. You just talked about the SEA grant concept. In addition to being an information source, are there other forms of actual funding programs that people should be aware of that NOAA does provide to help with resiliency to help with reinforcement of our existing communities and fisheries and the like?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:31:13):
So under the BIL and IRA funding, we've received roughly 6 billion from those two pieces of legislation and some of it is going towards coastal resilience and so for some of the funding, and we've already put some of this out the door, some of the funding has been towards either restoration of a wetland to reduce the flooding that is occurring and putting in sea grass, but also we've even helped move communities in Alaska that are facing erosion and sea level rise and storms and need to move back from the coast and how that happens. But a lot of people are starting to think about coastal resilience. They also think that sea level rise is something in the future in Alaska, it's happening at a faster rate. We're seeing the erosion, we're seeing communities that need to move and it's a different challenge in Alaska than it is in an urban center in the lower 48 because in Alaska often there isn't the development inland so you can move those communities more easily.
(00:32:09):
The challenges in the coastal zones and urban environments is figuring out what to do now when you have populations and you have development, how do you build that resilience in those places? And some regions that actually are taking as creating are augmenting natural reefs. So we have a whole program that I just visited here in Miami around coral reef frustration and so we actually know how to grow coral reefs, restore them afterwards, and they're really important storm and wave action to reduce the erosion that takes place. There will be additional grants around coastal resilience around climate ready fisheries. We have various programs for resilience for using our data and information and then there's also a lot of competitive grants that we do for fundamental scientific research, but increasingly it's also on that translation of the science. So engineers and insurers and reinsurers are applying for that funding often with either federal scientists or even academic scientists around trying to understand what the future holds and how to translate climate information into various climate risk information or weather extreme information. We also fund grants around how do you effectively communicate risk either in forecast or long-term risks so that people take that information and act.
Cody Simms (00:33:34):
You said BIL. For folks who maybe didn't pick up on that acronym, that's bipartisan infrastructure law and funding. I don't know if the C-level relocation funding was part of bipartisan infrastructure law or part of inflation reduction act. Maybe you could clarify that if you know. But thinking of resilience as infrastructure is a really interesting concept to me.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:33:56):
Fundamentally the built environment was built for what expectations of the previous climate were and so to ensure that it lasts into the future, you either need retrofitting or new rebuilding or potentially changing infrastructure. Fundamentally built environment needs to change in response to that.
Yin Lu (00:34:17):
Hey everyone, I'm yin a partner at MCJ Collective here to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing that goes beyond just listening to the podcast. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally each week we're inspired by people who join with different backgrounds and points of view. What we all share is a deep curiosity to learn and a bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change. Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community, A number of founding teams have met, several nonprofits have been established and a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made as well as ongoing events and programming like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club art workshops and more. Whether you've been in the climate space for a while or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcj collective.com and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Cody Simms (00:35:18):
I think of often the DOE, the Department of Energy, as being the vanguard for defining how our energy systems should change, what the transition should look like, where the world should go from an energy perspective in order to reduce emissions of our energy systems and ultimately eventually migrate society off of fossil fuels, which is what most scientists say is what needs to happen to slow down and ultimately stop the effects of climate change. I'm picking up from you that NOAA has a big role to play. Okay, so that's great. That's like offense, but DOE is doing how do we move forward from an offense perspective and change the direction we're going. I'm hearing that NOAA is almost very involved in the defense side of things, which is the world is going to change no matter how good of a job we do in transition. We're already into change now and what does the world need to know about that change and what are the things the world should be doing to get ready for it or to act on it or can NOAA even help them make change happen? It's an interesting aha that I had that I don't know that I had coming into this conversation.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:36:34):
People for a very long time thought too that if we mitigate and we reduce emissions and we clean the grid that this climate change problem wasn't going to be something that we would all have to experience. But we are seeing changes in the probabilities of magnitudes of events and of different parts of climate all around the world. No place is left untouched. Climate change is already in the here and now where we are experiencing it and we need to respond as long as emissions continue to increase and collect in the atmosphere, the manifestations of climate change will continue. The science of NOAA is understanding what those manifestations are into the future, but our main focus is on the physical, the biological, the chemical hard science of what is to come. And then those intersections of how those then affect society, that then shows us what we need to do to adapt, to build resilience.
(00:37:31):
And so with our social behavioral economic scientists across, no, we understand those translations of some of the ways that people either will respond or we translate also into financial impacts. We also, I didn't mention this, we manage the billion dollar disaster program dataset. So since 1980 we quantify billion dollar disaster disasters, at least a billion dollars of damage that CPI adjusted and we count the number of those disasters in those total value and we also classify what types of events they are. Is it a hurricane, is it a flood, is it a drought, severe storm like those with hail and tornadoes? So we quantify those in time and since we started taking those measurements, we saw $1 billion asta roughly every two and a half months and now we're getting one every roughly two and a half weeks more are happening. They're extreme weather and climate events and they're happening because there's vulnerabilities in society.
(00:38:33):
If we adapt, we can actually bend that curve and not see more of those types of events, not see more damages. But if we expect that with climate change that it won't affect us when our buildings and our agriculture and everything was built for a climate that doesn't exist anymore, we will see more damages. And so the information that we have of knowing what the future looks like can inform all the different decisions and investment and activities to be able to avoid that and can sometimes feel squishy when I talk about that. So one a concrete example is for agriculture, for certain types of wheat, certain types of wheat need less water but also are harder in heat and just changing those seeds is really important. So we work with USDA, we also work with state department USAID on understanding what does it look like now and what does it look like in the future and then how does that inform your programs as you're trying to inform agriculture in the US and abroad of what needs to be planted to deal with that.
Cody Simms (00:39:37):
Climate science has models that show here's what temperature changes are going to be at various emission levels or in terms of slowing down emissions or lack thereof. Here's what the temperature implications are going to be and at each of these temperature bans, here's what this might mean in terms of effects on the world. With your erstwhile finance hat on, does NOAA do the work to then understand what are the financial implications of those things or does that go to someone else in the government to manage?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:40:09):
We do it in the case of fisheries in particular because we are supposed to manage fisheries and we also put out an annual report on the state of the economic health of fisheries and we also work with our partners in commerce around quantifying what is the marine economy and how is the marine economy doing and how do you forecast that into the future. So there's some knowledge in that we are fundamentally doing the science making the projections and that information is for understanding all the financial impacts and you're starting to get into what is the risk to other parts of government and what are the exposures with that
Cody Simms (00:40:45):
And even what percentage of all of this is going to get funded by government dollars relative to private dollars being impacted. Those are potentially, I presume giant numbers. I don't know where to find those things.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:40:59):
Well, it's hard to find those things because that area of economics is really only growing right now. Actually at the beginning of the Biden administration, I was a bench scientist at NOAA and I was working at NOAA and I was able to advise on the executive order of the president put out on climate finance risk that came out in May of 2021. Then after that I went to JP Morgan and was there for some time before coming back as chief scientist. And that executive order actually launched a need to start quantifying what are the risks and exposures of climate change because we don't have the processes to do that in government. And also academically there's some research in this space, but it's not robust enough to do the budgeting, the understanding of the future and the way that people are really comfortable in with anything else that they're doing for budget forecasting or understanding the effects.
(00:41:49):
And so one of the things that has been launched, the result has been this round table at the National Academy of Sciences that I sit on as an ex officio member, but also people from Treasury and Council of Economic Advisors, also economists from academia, experts in various fields of economics and science are all sitting on this and are talking about how do you develop the research and the work that is needed to do these types of forecasts and understand what those future damages are in the way that we do it as routinely for everything else. We're also at this special moment in time where people are realizing that they need to go quickly to develop the tools and the science to make those types of financial decisions. That work has not happened at the level that it needs to or the level that we would like that we have for everything else.
(00:42:39):
And so we're still in the stage where there's a lot of uncertainty around that and that is where fundamental research needs to advance. But directionally, we do have information on certain issues like sea level rise and the cost of sea level rise affecting coastal regions. We know what the sea level rise is going to be roughly a foot in most of the US by 2050 and parts of the Gulf Coast states it'll be 1.5 feet. And so we know what has exposure to that right now. And so unless there's adaptation around those activities in the coastal zones or trying to deal with that, those assets that are along the coast will be lost.
Cody Simms (00:43:17):
Alright, we're going to come back to that and implications in a few other areas as well. I just want to underscore something that I heard you say and imply, which is we don't have all the answers yet on the size of the resilience response that needs to happen because we haven't done all the work yet. This is all still new and it's changing like everything else. And I don't know if I take comfort in that or am concerned by that, but it's interesting to hear that this is still new. We are still trying to figure it out. It's a good reminder to me that for 20 or 30 years, scientists were screaming into the wind that climate change was going to happen. Finally, people started listening. And then for maybe the last 10 or 15, it's been a concerted effort, maybe not as fast as everyone would like, but to put plans in place to transition our energy systems to move toward renewables, to electrify everything.
(00:44:13):
And that has momentum now. It's building, it's building, it's building, and now it's time to turn our attention to, but it's not going to happen fast enough and the world is going to change and continue to change and what is that set of problem? And gosh, if you are a young postdoc right now, it feels like you've got so much important work to try to map out in front of you. It just feels potentially like a scary time, but a very important time to be a scientist and help the world get their arms around all of these changes that are coming.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:44:45):
It's an incredible time for the scientists that are coming up. They're shifting towards being solutions focused and talking to the students that are coming through. It's different than when I was entering grad school. When I entered grad school, I was like, I want to figure out how to do climate finance. What are you talking about? And now even the physical scientists, the one that want to do more theoretical work, they're starting to think in this area of how do we create the data we need for the changes that we're seeing and the challenges and questions that we need to ask of society. There's more interdisciplinary work than I've ever seen before. There's also been a shift recently. There's many climate programs that are focused on, as you said, there's a lot of focus on the energy side and mitigation and that's really important, but there's also growing interest and understanding that we need to figure out how to adapt and how to build resilience.
(00:45:34):
And so there are new programs setting up around that. Those intersections are with the built environment. They're also with health, which is an emerging issue of all the different ways that you need to be resilient. And in some ways resilience and adaptation. Measuring it is also a little bit harder because in everything with mitigation you can boil it down to some sort of equivalency of carbon dioxide, whereas resilience, adaptation, those metrics depend on the thing that you're looking at or the piece of society, the piece of the economy, the sector that you're in. And so it's a little bit harder I think for people to understand what that means. And for investors, I think it's harder because you want one thing and it's confusing with there's many things. The challenge of this is that it's affecting everything and everyone is going to need to push forward on it.
(00:46:26):
Putting back to the young students and the scientists, they're pushing on this in all different fields and all different areas and trying to create those interdisciplinary programs with that thinking because they have the thing that interests them and they're seeing it as a piece of a climate solution. And so I also say that to anyone working even outside of science, that every single job can be a climate job of some sort because everything that you do will be impacted in some way. And so if you start thinking in that way of how the world is changing, you can then understand how your business practices need to be adapted.
Cody Simms (00:47:04):
One could argue that of all the money we as a society will need to spend on the energy transition, the amount of money that we as a society will need to spend on batting down the hatches is probably an order of magnitude greater.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:47:19):
The hard part is the amount that we need to spend on adaptation depends on how much we spend on mitigation because that puts us on different paths. Historically, there's only been five to 10% of most global finance. This is public and private has been spent on adaptation. Vast majority has been on mitigation, vast majority for the energy systems, we see that it needs to at least double. And depending on which pathway and what happens in the future in terms of emissions, that number could go up or it could go down. And it all depends on where we are
Cody Simms (00:47:51):
When it comes to funding. When I think of resiliency and adaptation, I think of big infrastructure projects being driven by huge global engineering firms. I spend my day working in the startup world. I'm curious what you are seeing out there in terms of both opportunities for startup innovation as well as potential funding sources for startups outside of venture capital dollars like government programs and the like in adaptation and resiliency in particular.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:48:19):
A lot of the science and a lot of the research that we're doing relates to adaptation, resiliency and the use of data and information or development of new data and information can be applied towards adaptation resiliency. And we fund at the very early stage through our small business innovation research grants, we give those grants that startups that haven't received any money. And so that is first about the business plan and building out and building out the concept, but then it's also creating that proof of concept to be able to move forward. So then you can get that angel investing. You may not be aware that every single science agency actually has these SBIR programs that are supposed to fund small businesses, be able to launch them.
Cody Simms (00:48:58):
I didn't, I think of BIR as mostly coming out of DOD. I don't know that I knew that NOAA and other agencies also have SBIR channels. That's super interesting info for me to go spend some time on.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:49:11):
Every science agency has an SBIR program and I welcome you to go look at ours. And NOAA, traditionally it's related to all of our different science areas or also where we need to see innovation in the private sector to be able to help co-innovate in critical areas to create new data or new measurements that we might also use ourselves. A lot of them that have been successful, that people have been seeing have been around use of satellite information or new sensor technologies in the ocean. And increasingly with aquaculture and the advancements of aquaculture, that sensor technology is really important. We have also funded ocean accelerator program and we actually released the first tranche of the grants that we funded for that of accelerators around the country. And the idea of that too is moving beyond just that early stage concept to being able to be in the next stage for growth and for more developments that those companies can then grow, really finalize the technologies and start scaling it, but then also create that community so that they get the business advice that they need, the connections that they can then also find their customers and also with support from academia or with the cities or that are involved in them, then grow to that next stage they can get venture capital.
(00:50:31):
So we're trying to fund at the different stages of those companies between our SBIR program and these ocean accelerators. And I would say that ocean accelerators have taken off in Canada and United States. We are seeing more and more interest in them as well and demand for them. And so we've been funding them as well.
Cody Simms (00:50:50):
We've seen particularly in the United States, unfortunately a lot about climate change be politicized, a lot about the energy transition be politicized. I understand in some cases why people's livelihood is in oil and gas. People's family grew up in those businesses. There are personal reasons why people feel the way they feel about different things and policies and is what it is, even if the science says there's a very clear path that needs to happen. Resiliency and adaptation feels intuitively like it should be a bipartisan issue. People want their neighborhoods to be safe. People want their communities to function the way they're used to them functioning. People don't want natural disasters. And yet I don't hear much being spoken about around these topics and I'm curious why that is or if you think it's just a matter of time.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:51:43):
I think it's just a matter of time. I think we talk in different communities. All I speak about all day, the climate mayors were here in Miami this past week and I was talking to many of them across the country and many of them were even saying what you're saying, this wasn't on my radar until I saw a bunch of floods or this wasn't on my radar until we'd experienced the worst heat wave we've ever experienced. And now I'm trying to figure out what that means and what I do. As people are affected by extreme weather events, extreme climate events, there's this heightened awareness right afterwards they want to build resilience. They're like, how do I make sure this doesn't happen again? And in that awareness is also when there's also an influx of dollars to be able to deal with the problem is they want to know how do I build?
(00:52:24):
So if this exact event happens doesn't cause deaths or doesn't cause damages, and increasingly they're asking, okay, we've never had this event before. What is the likelihood of events in the future? How are those changing? Because whatever we invest right now, I want to make sure lasts for five years or 10 years or whatever time horizon they're available to. And then it adjusts based on the amount of money that they have. But they're increasingly post-disaster asking those types of questions. No one wants to see bad events happen. They don't want their economy to suffer the livelihoods of the people around them to suffer. And so they want to be able to live, they want to be able to continue their activities. And so post events is when people are most aware of it and are trying to figure out what to do. And you'll just see more and more events around the world.
Cody Simms (00:53:13):
I want to make sure we do give some airtime to some of the science that is causing some of these events. I think it's really important for people to understand at least the high level of some of the changes that are happening. People who listen to this pod presumably understand the greenhouse effect and why carbon emissions in the atmosphere caused the world to be warmer or to change temperatures. But maybe let's click a level deeper on what is happening with our atmospheric circulation. What is happening with our ocean currents and our ocean patterns? There was big news that came out I think about a month ago, about the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation, the AMOC, maybe give people the latest science of what is happening in the world's circulatory system.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:54:00):
So the National Center for Environmental Information in NOAA puts out a report monthly that gives you a state of the climate of the last month or the last several months or the last year, and then it contextualizes it within our long record. So for this past month, February and the months proceeding, we saw that every single month was the warmest on record and we had that for nine months straight. And that is due to both climate change, creating this warmer environment and increasing it. But it's also due to the fact that we also had El Nino. So the El Nino is when it's really, really warm in the Eastern Pacific. All this heat that's in the ocean that gets stored suddenly comes out of the ocean in that location that goes in the atmosphere. So we have had this long warming trend, but then on top of it, and El Nino increases global temperatures by about 0.1 degrees Celsius.
(00:54:57):
So this pushed us over the edge where we broke all these atmosphere temperature records. It also led to us breaking ocean temperature records. Almost roughly 40% of the ocean was also in a marine heat wave. So it wasn't just a heat wave in the atmosphere that we were seeing, global temperatures were high. We were also seeing it actually in the ocean and combination of things in the ocean. It's the El Nino, it's global warming. There are a bunch of theories also that it could be changes in aerosols, that there was a volcanic event that also could impact it. There's going to be a ton of research to really understand all the reasons. We saw such a warm year in 2023 and in recent months in the atmosphere and in the ocean. These have manifestations as coral reef bleaching. We just went out and we looked at the coral reefs and the Florida keys, and there's only 20% of stag corals in them When it gets really hot, the corals bleach.
(00:55:51):
We also, to your point about the Atlantic marial overturning circulation, have had a bunch of research papers have come out recently on that and they're using a combination of observations and models to say what is the state of that now and what do we expect in the future? And the observational papers are starting to say that you're seeing a slow down in that circulation pattern in the ocean. And then the models are trying to say, would it stop or reverse at some point. And so what that is is it's how water circulates in the Atlantic where you then have the water at the surface goes very deep into the ocean so it sinks down. That drives how the water moves around all Atlantic Ocean, but it also pulls heat and energy into the northern hemisphere, so it makes Europe a lot warmer. It also brings in, because since it's warmer and those top ocean atmosphere, it also brings moisture to Europe. And so if that were to slow down, we would see it become much drier and colder in Europe relatively, which is problematic because they're worried that there's less water. They would have problems with agriculture. It also automatically changes sea level rise on the East coast. There's a lot of research around this. There's also some sensationalization that I see as people see some of the media on it. We don't know exactly how that is going to change or when, but we do have an idea that directionally climate change is making it slow down
Cody Simms (00:57:17):
Going the other side of the US with the west coast, we just emerged from this mega mega drought and this year the west coast has been inundated with snow and rain. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? How should we interpret that?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:57:34):
I think a lot of people have forgotten living on the west coast, living in the worst multi-decade drought in over a thousand years. They've forgotten that California has these boom bust cycles of wet and drought. Historically. California in particular gets the vast majority of its precipitation only a couple of days in the year from these things called atmospheric rivers that bring moisture from the tropics all the way up to California. Historically, we see these years and often the way that multi-year, multi-decade droughts break is by a season like this. The water is important because it's refilling the reservoirs. All the mass amounts of snow will lead to that melting later in the season, which will hopefully reduce the fire season this upcoming summer. We need that water, we need that snow, we need that desperately. But with climate change, there's an expectation that it gets drier on average in the American West.
(00:58:32):
So it's a reprieve, but it's expected to get drier on average. But just because it gets drier on average does not mean that you will not get years like this where you get storm after storm that brings the snow, that brings the rain. I call these things climate conundrums. When you hear the general climate change term, it makes you think that you're going to have one state, but actually the variability particularly in those extreme years can be counterintuitive to it. It creates a communication challenge for us, but also a preparation challenge for how to prepare and deal with that different type of climate than what we're used to.
Cody Simms (00:59:10):
And you mentioned you're from the Midwest and the Great Lakes are part of NOAA's purview. What are you seeing happen change around the Midwest?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:59:17):
For a long time people thought that climate change was going to reduce lake levels. Lake levels did get reduced, but then they rebounded really rapidly in the last couple of years. And so there's a lot of work right now understanding what is the variability of lake levels in the Great Lakes. There is infrastructure and buildings along the lake shore, and so the future of that really matters to those people. We also saw record lows for ice across the Great Lakes this past winter because the US had such a warm winter. Where are you based?
Cody Simms (00:59:50):
I'm in Los Angeles.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (00:59:52):
So you were dealing with all the water, whereas the Midwest was dealing with this really warm winter with people being bitten by mosquitoes in Minnesota in February. They usually should not be out for another few months or weeks. So it was warm and it was warm due to climate change. It was warm due to El Nino and then also warm due to the fact that this ice didn't form. There's a lot of research still to understand what is the future of ice. There's expectations. The season for ice will be shorter. There's a lot of work to understand what is the variability of that going to be, particularly after we saw this extreme low of ice. There's going to be a lot of questions about what expectations are for that for the future. And then also as a counterintuitive response when there was less ice, there was more water that could evaporate, which then enhanced some of the storms that came across the Great Lakes, which dumped even more snow and lake effect snow in some places where people live, while it can be warmer, it can have these counterintuitive things where you then actually also get more snow when you do get a storm in some of those places.
Cody Simms (01:00:54):
If you had to extrapolate 30 years from now in the US, do you anticipate there are significant population centers today that won't be wholly viable for people to continue to live in? Or do you expect humanity to figure out how to enable existing societies to continue?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:01:16):
Humans are able to respond to our climate. We live in Antarctica. NOAA actually has had a station there for decades. We also have people that live in deserts. And so what will change is how we build for the different types of climates that we experience and how we need to retrofit what we have in existing buildings or infrastructure to deal with it. And with anything people move around so people may move around to be in the climate that they like or also following the services that are available and are adapted to what they want. That is a question for the anthropologists of what we will exactly see in the United States and around the world.
Cody Simms (01:01:55):
So as we think about the planet changing around us, there are a lot of things we can do to harden infrastructure and help communities adapt. There are also some technologies out there that might be almost in the realm of science fiction that are seeking to directly intervene in our natural systems and change them, change how the ocean works, change the acidity of the ocean, change the solar reflectivity of our atmosphere. Surely NOAA has been asked to weigh in on the implications of these things or the viability of some of them. I'm curious which ones of any of these topics you've dug into.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:02:37):
Our job is to monitor the planet but then also understand and project the future. On the topic of marine carbon dioxide removal, we actually put out last summer a report of a science strategy for marine carbon dioxide removal. What is the science that we need to do? And it was agnostic to technology and type, but it was laying out what is the science that needs to take place to understand it. We also, through a public-private partnership, we funded and we brought together various entities under NOAA. We led the competition, but we brought together the Navy, we brought DOE, we brought NSF, we brought Climes together to all fund technologies for marine carbon dioxide removal. It was actually put underneath our ocean acidification program. So it's all the technologies to monitor, to measure, to create some modeling around it. But it's also fundamentally how do you have a change in the pH?
(01:03:31):
How do you reduce the effects of ocean acidification? And one of the technologies that I'm really excited about if it works as they do this research is one around taking sewage treatment plants and doing alkalinity enhancement and then having that water return to the ocean in a region where you also have aquaculture. Because we're starting to see with shells and crabs and shellfish and clams that you are starting to see the effects of ocean acidification and their ability to make their shells. And so if we can create a program where you have that eloquently enhancement, potentially takes carbon out of the atmosphere but also deals with that acidification problem, you then also solve an issue of shellfish. And when I talk to people in the development space about this, if that technology also works, that potentially is also a technology that you can apply for development around the world where you need these infrastructure projects for water pollution and water quality.
(01:04:35):
And then if you can actually implement that, you deal with a pollution problem, which is a major issue for coral reefs and coastal zones. But then you also deal with the aquaculture problems that we're starting to see with ocean acidification. And then on top of it, you might be able to enter the carbon markets and access the carbon markets, but also have the drawdown of carbon. I see it as a critical thing that we need to be studying and figuring out what we're going to do in this space and make sure that we have the impacts that we expect if these types of technologies are pursued.
Cody Simms (01:05:06):
We've had a few companies focusing on these types of solutions on the pod in the past for folks who want to go back into the archives and just learn about some of the methodologies. They may not be ones that you wholly endorse or not, but there are at least people thinking about these. In particular, there's a company called Planetary and there's a company called Vesta that folks can go back and listen in the archives and just hear about how these entrepreneurs are thinking about the science and the potential business opportunities in this space of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:05:37):
So you can also picture it. We are monitoring the world's oceans. We have information around the world, but over 50% of the world's oceans is monitored by noaa. The measurements are coming from NOAA. And one of the major measurements that we take around the world is through the Argo program, which are these floats that go along in the ocean and they follow the currents, but they take temperature and salinity, they sink down and then they come back to the surface. And so they take these profiles of the ocean of that information. So originally they were just temperature and salinity, and that's really important for us to do seasonal prediction because the ocean moves slowly and so that affects the atmosphere, so lets us know what's going to happen over many seasons. But increasingly they also have, they're called BGC, Argo Bio Geochemical Argo, and that can also have pH sensors can also have different parts of biology. So we can also get a bigger picture also of ocean ification information around the globe with these types of measurements. And so it's a fundamental important piece of knowing what's happening in the world's oceans, but potentially also under pitting any future markets around these space
Cody Simms (01:06:41):
Moving from oceans to atmosphere. What about the reflectivity type of technologies that are out there? I assume you guys have spent time in that space as well.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:06:50):
NOAA manages an earth's radiation budget program, and part of that is understanding what is the chemical composition of the atmosphere. And so with that, we recently had flights where we flew aircraft into the stratosphere to knowing what's up there with this too, there is a study of what is the future of science in that space? What else do we need to do in understanding it? And we actually have a report that we've been working on that will come out, it's going to congress hopefully later this summer on what does the science strategy of that look like? Again, agnostic to the different types of science, but what does the research look like to get a handle on this type of science to be able to understand where we need to go? And we're the only agency that actually has had some appropriations in this space from this program. We've already made really important scientific discoveries. Those aircraft that flew into the stratosphere, they're able to see that there are particles in the stratosphere that are there because of satellites coming in through the atmosphere and burning up. And we wouldn't have any idea what was there if we didn't have the funding to then fly aircraft into it. And so there's a ton of research to be done and to continue to understand what's happening at all layers of our atmosphere. And that strategy will come out later this summer.
Cody Simms (01:08:09):
Where should a person like me go to find these papers as they emerge?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:08:13):
You can find the marine carbon dioxide removal one NOAA Science Council website that has our fact sheets on critical science topics. We've been doing them for decades around this is the latest of science of these things, and it has reports there. You'll also find the research guidance Meum that I also produced. I'll also say that because of the weather modification Act from many decades ago, there is a reporting function that people also report on activities related to weather modification. And most people are doing that with respect to cloud seating for snow in the Western us. But that is also a place where anyone doing activities related to that also need to report.
Cody Simms (01:09:01):
Today. People look at the weather forecast to decide what they're going to wear if they're going to take an umbrella in their car or whatever. I know certain people who are deciding where they want to move their families because of what they expect climate change to look like if they're going to make a long-term investment like buy a home. Do you think that becomes more the norm for people that they build this long-term change planning into their own personal lives?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:09:26):
I think as people become more aware of what data is out there, they will respond to the data that is available for what the future holds. I'll say that about 10 years ago, journalists started asking me, what is the ideal climate place to live? And I even wrote a paper on it, on what parts of the world have the best mild weather days? So a day without too much rain, it's not too hot, not too cold, and we could map it around the world of where the good weather was. Those patterns are changing, and it all depends on people's preferences for what type of climate, but it also is all the opportunities that exist in society and in housing and all these other parts of society and economic and opportunity which may not match perfectly with climate. And so to be able to understand where people will be depends on all those other factors, and that's what makes adaptation resilience so complex is it is the combination of the science and what we expect in the future for our climate, but it also depends on what we have built around it to provide people the lives that they want.
Cody Simms (01:10:31):
I would guess many in the finance and insurance worlds are starting to make those bets now.
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:10:38):
If the built environment is not resilient to extreme weather, extreme climate, it will change. Either the environment will change or the capital will change.
Cody Simms (01:10:49):
Sarah, this has been really, really informative. What more would you like to share any calls to action, any areas that you want to make sure that listeners who are motivated by your remarks today, no ways that they can lean in and help. What do you want to see more of in the world right now? Where would you ideally like to see more effort, more resource, more brainpower going to work?
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:11:15):
So first of all, I want to say, when I talk about the facts about the changes that we will see, I always worry that people are going to get very depressed listening to me. And I just want to say that we know what to expect in certain parts of the world due to climate change, and then we take that information and then we use it. That gives us the power to figure out what to do next. It allows for innovation. I think innovation is the most important thing that we need to do on adaptation and resilience. How do we take this information? How do we transform society needs to be where we are focusing many of our efforts.
Cody Simms (01:11:49):
Well, I appreciate your time today and I learned a ton and thank you for the work that you do,
Dr. Sarah Kapnick (01:11:54):
And thank you very much for letting me tell the story of NOAA.
Cody Simms (01:11:57):
Thanks again for joining us on My Climate Journey podcast. At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovations for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity. If you'd like to learn more about M CJ Collective, visit us@mcjcollective.com. And if you have a guest suggestion, let us know that via Twitter at mcj pod
Yin Lu (01:12:24):
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Cody Simms (01:12:33):
Thanks and see you next episode.