The International Research Institute for Climate and Society is part of a new project funded by USAID and NASA will use satellite imagery to address environment and development challenges across the Amazon Basin.
By Alex Sweeney Peering into the satellite control rooms at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) last month was extremely exciting. As participants of the NASA DEVELOP National Program, we use satellite data every day in our research. Helen Cen and I had just finished our end-of-term presentations with other DEVELOP participants and were led […]
A walk through the International Research Institute for Climate and Society is often punctuated by the sounds of French, Spanish and other languages drifting through the halls. Our international staff contributes to this, but usually it’s a sign that we are hosting visitors for training and collaborations. Despite the increasing online connectedness of our world, […]
In a few months, NASA will launch a new satellite mission called Soil Moisture Active Passive, SMAP, which will provide high-resolution global coverage of soil moisture conditions. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society is collaborating with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the CGIAR’s Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security to develop a crop-forecasting […]
IRI’s Pietro Ceccato recently attended the 2nd Capacity Building Workshop for the World Health Organization TDR/IDRC research initiative on Population Health Vulnerabilities to Vector-Borne Diseases: Increasing Resilience under Climate Change Conditions in Africa, held at the Nelson Mandela University in Arusha, Tanzania. He shares his observations here. Earlier this year, I attended a workshop in Arusha, Tanzania […]
By Bristol Mann and Radost Stanimirova A group of climate scientists, economists and remote sensing experts from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are collaborating to help solve a longstanding issue in the development of agriculture insurance programs in Africa: how to generate enough quality environmental data […]
by Michael Shirber, for Astrobiology Magazine Wind and dust conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa Africa can help predict a meningitis epidemic. Determining the role of climate in the spread of certain diseases can assist health officials in “forecasting” epidemics. New research on meningitis incidence in sub-Saharan Africa pinpoints wind and dust conditions as predictors of the […]
Andrew Kruczkiewicz sits in front of his laptop, examining a map of South Sudan. The map shows precipitation across the country in varying shades of green. Kruczkiewicz is comparing maps of rainfall and other climate variables with epidemiological information over the same area. He and his research partner, Alexandra Sweeney, are both interns for NASA’s DEVELOP […]
IRI and NASA have been working together for the past five years on developing products derived from remotely sensed images for monitoring climate and environmental factors that affect the transmission of vector-borne diseases. Their collaboration has expanded recently through new activities with SERVIR Africa, NASA’s partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Regional […]
By Elisabeth Gawthrop, Climate and Society ’13 Public health professionals are increasingly concerned about the impact climate variability and change can have on infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and bacterial meningitis. However, in order to study the relationships between climate and health, researchers first need access to the appropriate kinds of climate data — an […]
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