(First published: 20130210 / Last Updated: 20130508) There are many national and a handful of international crop monitoring and forecasting systems. All maintain websites and publish bulletins, which summarise their analyses for decision makers at the national level and beyond. A collection of national bulletins is available from the WAMIS website of WMO, as...
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As I was updating a couple of things in another corner of this blog, I stumbled upon of a passage in a recent book by Nate Silver (2012) that has a lot of relevance for crop forecasters. It is relevant to two different but related subjects: (1) averaging different forecasts and (2) mixing cross-sectional...
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The post on the risky business of forecasting is updated every time something happens with the trial of the scientists who failed to predict the L’Aquila earthquake. The trial reminded me of another story that happened in Italy: the Vajont disaster. In this case, the forecast was perfect (and far more certain than earthquake prediction) …...
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(First published: 20091016 / Last Updated: 20121030) – Forecasting the future is a difficult task, as there are many more ways to be wrong than right! In addition, a forecast is not just a statement about what might happen, it is also embedded in a context that may be as relevant as the forecast...
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Experts I’ve interviewed over the past six years generally agree that such a Next Big One is not only possible but probable. They agree that it will almost certainly be a zoonotic disease — one that emerges from wildlife — and that the causal agent will most likely be a virus. They agree that...
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First published 20120718 / last updated on 20120924 Is climate change the worst nightmare scenario for our future? We know it is there to stay, and experts tell us daily about what we are to expect (note 2). Nevertheless, the science of impacts is a very uncertain business, because it relies – through models...
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Malnutrition remains the world’s most serious health problem and the single biggest contributor to child mortality. Nearly one-third of children in the developing world are either underweight or stunted, and more than 30 percent of the developing world’s population suffers from micronutrient deficiencies (WB 2006, introduction.) Needless to say, many authors, summits and international...
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This text by Didier Nordon appeared in February 2011 in Pour la science, the French edition of Scientific American (N.400, Bloc-notes, page 5). Related posts: How difficult it is to be a climatologist. The title is a pun based on a combination of la loi du plus fort (the law of the strongest) with...
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Version française, cliquez ici. After “The risky business of forecasting“, which focused on natural disasters, here is a note that looks more closely at the broader picture of our societies. It reviews different articles that have recently shown some skill in forcasting the future. The first comprises of simple power law equations the coefficients...
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This note about mountain climate is an updated and expanded version of an earlier text I wrote for the website of FAO many years ago (July 2002). Since then, I have left FAO for JRC and I have actually started working on climate related risk issues in a rather mountainous country (Ethiopia)… which somehow...
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Updated 20110922 In reaction to the first oil crisis of the mid seventies, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia decided to decrease its dependency on food imports by developing local food production using water from deep, non-renewable aquifers. After this has been going on for about thirty years now, the country realized that, maybe, water...
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Cette famine me fascine depuis longtemps. J’ai écrit ce petit texte il y a quelques années, et j’ai rassemblé pas mal de documentation sur le sujet. Disons que cette ébauche me servira d’amorce quand je parviendrai à me décider! Cette famine offre un exemple classique de pénurie complexe: les facteurs incluent des problèmes phytosanitaires...
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1. Introduction (*) Crop-climate interactions are of relevance for a number of applications, in food security, crop insurance, market planning and climate change impact assessments. All these fields have an interest in crop modelling and forecasting. The interest of forecasting goes beyond the immediate subjects discussed here, as all science is somehow about “forecasting”,...
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Updated 20111007 This post explains how a vague and unsubstantiated statement in a non-peer reviewed “report” about climate change and agriculture in Maghreb countries made its way via a poor translation into volume 2 of AR4 (IPCC 4th Assessment Report), from there into the summary for policy makers where it eventually became almost certain...
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This is a revised version of the 20100103 post. Tom rightly commented on 2010110 that there was some confusion between data and information, and he warned me that if I ended up talking of insight, I would certainly get it wrong. I am lucky he did not mention knowledge and wisdom… Just to clarify...
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Just before COP-15 took place in Copenhagen in December 2009, unknow people broke into the computers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and stole email correspondence of Prof. Jones, a major figure in the IPCC. The issue received wide media coverage and was eventually referred to as Climategate....
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The graph shows recent trends of climate, urbanisation and a livestock production index (meat and milk). The data stem from various FAO sources: FAOSTAT for the production and population data, while the National Rainfall Indices (NRI) come from CLIMPAG. All variables are aggregated at the level of the “central-Eastern Sahel” by combining data...
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Below is a text by Einstein, which I got somewhere on the web. I like it because I have always considered that crises are opportunities to change directions. As Le Chatelier had observed, chemical systems tend to resist changes. While we are certainly complex chemical systems, humans are no exception: we just hate changes...
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By Anna-Giulia, Eric, Jacques and Wergosum The idea for this note started with...
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First published 20121020 / Last updated 20121028 Bread is one of the most typical products of agriculture, and, somehow,...
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(Published 20100908 / Last updated 20121019) — As a student, I read an article by Rappaport (The sacred in...
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Published 20091223/Last updated 20120916 with the quote below, taken from Johnson’s Where good ideas come from … as imagination...
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First posted on 20111027. Updated 20120214. French version: click here An interesting controversy has been going on for a...
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(Published 20100212 / Last updated 20111207) There are basically three types of BIG problems facing the earth and, ultimately,...
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While writing the post on mountain climate(s), I wanted to provide examples for the severity of living conditions in...
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While writing the “fun” post below on Eurobabel, I collected some data on the actual use of European languages....
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This post is about the use of languages in the European Commision (EC) and the European Union (EU). There...
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The Super Proton Synchroton (SPS) at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is a very large “machine” (a tunnel,...
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The extreme right, xenophobia and nationalism are gaining ground in many countries in Europe. Sometimes (Belgium), the situation borders...
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Ce week-end, je me suis installé devant mon portable en me disant que j’allais écrire quelques lignes sur les...
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God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) Great programme, Lord! I am pleased to inform you that...
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[Cet article a été écrit dans le sillage d'un cours que j'ai donné en 2009 à l'université de L.,...
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La biographie de Tolkien que j’ai déjà citée (Humphrey Carpenter, 2002. J.R.R. Tolkien, une biographie. Christian Bourgeois Editeur, 318...
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J’ai recu par email, il y a déjà quelque temps, cette publicité du “mage” marocain Lafkih Sheikh Rohani Zarouk....
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