Publications Published in 2000

1. 2000 Environmental Report (NO Hard Copy). .
   PG & E: 2000
   Notes
   PG&E Corporation is the parent company of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the Northern and Central California utility that serves about one out of every 20 Americans, and the PG&E National Energy Group, which markets wholesale energy products and services nationwide. The Corporation’s businesses employ 22,000 people and operate facilities throughout the United States, including 100 electric generating facilities, among them 83 hydroelectric facilities and one windpower facility; two solid fuel handling and processing facilities; more than 6,900 miles of natural gas pipelines; 23 natural gas compressor stations; 14,000 miles of electric transmission lines; 142,000 miles of gas and electric local distribution lines; 95 service centers; and more than 1,000 substations.
   
   
   
2. A comparison of delta change and downscaled GCM scenarios for three mountainous basins in the United States. Hay, L. E.; Wilby, R. J. L.; Leavesley, G. H..
   Journal of the American Water Resources Association: 2000
   Notes
   Simulated daily precipitation, temperature, and runoff time series were compared in three mountainous basins in the United States: (1) the Animas River basin in Colorado, (2) the East Fork of the Carson River basin in Nevada and California, and (3) the Cle Elum River basin in Washington State. Two methods of climate scenario generation were compared: delta change and statistical downscaling. The delta change method uses differences between simulated current and future climate conditions from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (HadCM2) General Circulation Model (GCM) added to observed time series of climate variables. A statistical downscaling (SDS) model was developed for each basin using station data and output from the National Center for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis regridded to the scale of HadCM2.
   
   
   
3. A neural network approach to local downscaling of GCM output for assessing wind power implications of climate change. Sailor, D. J.; Hu, T.; Li, X.; Rosen, J. N..
   Renewable Energy: 2000
   Notes
   A methodology is presented for downscaling General Circulation Model (GCM) output to predict surface wind speeds at scales of interest in the wind power industry under expected future climatic conditions. The approach involves a combination of Neural Network tools and traditional weather forecasting techniques. A Neural Network transfer function is developed to relate local wind speed observations to large scale GCM predictions of atmospheric properties under current climatic conditions. By assuming the invariability of this transfer function under conditions of doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide, the resulting transfer function is then applied to GCM output for a transient run of the National Center for Atmospheric Research coupled ocean-atmosphere GCM. This methodology is applied to three test sites in regions relevant to the wind power industry—one in Texas and two in California. Changes in daily mean wind speeds at each location are presented and discussed with respect to potential implications for wind power generation.
   
   
   
4. A Spectral Nudging Technique for Dynamical Downscaling Purposes. von Storch, Hans; Langenberg, Heike; Feser, Frauke.
   Monthly Weather Review: 2000
   Notes
   The “spectral nudging” method imposes time-variable large-scale atmospheric states on a regional atmospheric model. It is based on the idea that regional-scale climate statistics are conditioned by the interplay between continental-scale atmospheric conditions and such regional features as marginal seas and mountain ranges. Following this “downscaling” idea, the regional model is forced to satisfy not only boundary conditions, possibly in a boundary sponge region, but also large-scale flow conditions inside the integration area.In the present paper the performance of spectral nudging in an extended climate simulation is examined. Its success in keeping the simulated state close to the driving state at larger scales, while generating smaller-scale features is demonstrated, and it is also shown that the standard boundary forcing technique in current use allows the regional model to develop internal states conflicting with the large-scale state. It is concluded that spectral nudging may be seen as a suboptimal and indirect data assimilation technique.
   
   
   
5. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. (Cover story). Myers, Norman; Mittermeier, Russell A..
   Nature: 2000
   Notes
   Cites the importance of identifying 'biodiversity hotspots' in the prevention of species extinction. Contribution of habitat destruction to extinction; Types and locations of `hotspots'; Assessment of endemism among higher taxa; Original implementation of the `hotspots' strategy in 1989.
   
   
   
6. Biodiversity is critical to future health of California's ecology and economy. Allen-Diaz, B.
   California Agriculture: 2000
   Notes
   Each individual organism plays a role in the birth-to-death cycle of this planet. Ecologists often refer to the web of life, describing the interconnectedness of all organisms and environments. Of California’s more than 4,800 native plant species, 29% are only found here. Each species is the repository of an immense amount of genetic information. Organisms provide direct economic value to humans in the form of marketable products such as food and medicine, as well as services like recreation, beauty and clean water. But civilization has been altering the Earth’s environment and the consuming resources at rates faster than during any known era in history. At the same time, we are poorly equipped to evaluate the environmental and economic trade-offs between species as traditional commodities, as providers of ecosystem services and as players with largely unknown roles in life on Earth. New institutional frameworks and incentives must be developed in the 21st century for making informed and wise choices about the environment. Such decision-making frameworks should ensure the protection of fundamental sources of food, clean water and habitat that are Earth’s life-support.
   
   
   
7. Carrots and sticks for new technology: Abating greenhouse gas emissions in a heterogenous and uncertain world. Robalino, David A; Lempert, Robert J.
   Integrated Assessment: 2000
   Notes
   Many governments use technology incentives as an important component of their greenhouse gas abatement strategies. These carrots are intended to encourage the initial diffusion of new, greenhouse-gas-emissions-reducing technologies, in contrast to carbon taxes and emissions trading which provide a stick designed to reduce emissions by increasing the price of high-emitting technologies for all users. Technology incentives appear attractive, but their record in practice is mixed and economic theory suggests that in the absence of market failures, they are inefficient compared to taxes and trading. This study uses an agent-based model of technology diffusion and exploratory modeling, a new technique for decision making under conditions of extreme uncertainty, to examine the conditions under which technology incentives should be a key building block of robust climate change policies. We find that a combined strategy of carbon taxes and technology incentives, as opposed to carbon taxes alone, is the best approach to greenhouse gas emissions reductions if the social benefits of early adoption sufficiently exceed the private benefits. Such social benefits can occur when economic actors have a wide variety of cost/performance preferences for new technologies and either new technologies have increasing returns to scale or potential adopters can reduce their uncertainty about the performance of new technologies by querying the experience of other adopters. We find that if decision- makers hold even modest expectations that such social benefits are significant or that the impacts of climate change will turn out to be serious then technology incentive programs may be a promising hedge against the threat of climate change.
   
   
   
8. Climate change sensitivity analysis for two California watersheds: Addendum to downscaled climate and streamflow study of the southwestern United States (vol 35, pg 1525, 1999). Miller, N. L.; Kim, J..
   Journal of the American Water Resources Association: 2000
   Notes
   In the December 1999 JAWRA Special Issue on Water Resources and Climate Change, Miller et al., presented an overview of downscaled climate and streamflow study of the southwestern United States. This manuscript included an initial sensitivity study of a doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration on western U.S. precipitation and streamflow. In the published manuscript, Figure 12a shows the mean annual precipitation for 1981 to 1984 and Figure 15 shows the mean annual precipitation difference between the downscaled control simulation and the 2xCO(2) projection. Both Figure 12a and Figure 15 are in units of mm/month. These units are incorrect, the correct units are mm/year. An additional California watershed is included here, as is more analysis of the streamflow result due to climate change.
   
   
   
9. Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling, and Impacts. Easterling, David R; Mehl, G.A.; Parmesan, Camille; Changnon, S.A.; Karl, Thomas R; Mearns, Linda O.
   Science: 2000
   Notes
   Discusses observations on and impact of climate extremes. Trends in certain climatic events; Description of temperature extremes; Analysis of the changes in extreme precipitation; Increase in areas being affected by drought and excessive wetness; Occurrence of tropical storm.
   
   
   
10. Climate monitoring: Taking the long view. Redmond, Kelly T.
    Water Resources Impact: 2000
    Notes
    The global climate change issue has highlighted the importance of careful attention to long-term monitoring. The suspected “signal” at any one place and time of year is expected to be dwarfed for some time by the inherent “noise” arising from the multiplicity of other behaviors of the climate system. Individual and aggregate (spatial and/or temporal average) values are scrutinized daily, monthly, yearly, and decadally for trends in means and variability. This search would not even be possible were it not for a rich history of measurements, meticulously recorded and laboriously compiled for several decades for some networks, and for well over a century for others. This particular application for those measurements, helping to resolve whether global and regional temperature and precipitation patterns are changing because of human influences, was nearly inconceivable when the earliest measurement programs were begun. In America, the purpose of the most-used climate data set, the cooperative network, was originally “to establish and record climate conditions in the United States”.