This study uses regression analysis to evaluate the relationships among sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) averaged over the Niño-3.4 region (5°N-5°S, 120°-170°W), rainfall, and rice production, area harvested, and yield in Luzon, the large island on which most Philippine rice is grown. Previous research on Philippine rice production and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has found negative associations between El Niño events and rice yields in rainfed systems. This analysis goes further and shows that both irrigated and rainfed ecosystems are impacted. It also compares impacts on area harvested and yield. Variations in average July-September Niño-3.4 SSTAs explain approximately 29% of the interannual variations in the deviations of total January-June (dry season) rice production from a polynomial trend for 1970-2005. In contrast, no impact was found on July-December production in either year t or t + 1. The impact of ENSO on dry-season rice production in Luzon appears to be primarily due to changes in area harvested rather than yield. Production declines for rainfed ecosystems are relatively larger than for irrigated ecosystems: a 1°C increase in average July-September Niño-3.4 SSTA is associated with a 3.7% decrease in irrigated dry-season production but with a 13.7% decline in rainfed dry-season production.

The capture and permanent storage of CO₂ emissions from coal combustion is now widely viewed as imperative for stabilization of the global climate.  Coal is the world’s fastest growing fossil fuel.  This trend presents a forceful case for the development and wide dissemination of technologies that can decouple coal consumption from CO₂ emissions—the leading candidate technology to do this is carbon capture and storage (CCS). 

China simultaneously presents the most challenging and critical test for CCS deployment at scale.   While China has begun an handful of marquee CCS demonstration projects, the stark reality to be explored in this paper is that China’s incentives for keeping on the forefront of CCS technology learning do not translate into incentives to massively deploy CCS in power plant applications as CO₂ mitigation would have it.  In fact, fundamental and interrelated Chinese interests—in energy security, economic growth and development, and macroeconomic stability—directly argue against large-scale implementation of CCS in China unless such an implementation can be almost entirely supported by outside funding.  This paper considers how these core Chinese goals play out in the specific context of the country’s coal and power markets, and uses this analysis to draw conclusions about the path of CCS implementation in China’s energy sector. 

Finally, the paper argues that effective climate change policy will require both the vigorous promotion and careful calculation of CCS’s role in Chinese power generation.  As the world approaches the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 and crafts a new policy architecture for a global climate deal, international offset policy and potential US offset standards need to create methodologies that directly address CCS funding at scale.  The more closely these policies are aligned with China’s own incentives and the unique context of its coal and power markets, the better chance they have of realizing the optimal role for CCS in global climate efforts.

Project development is particularly challenging in “frontier” environments where alternative technologies, conflicting laws and agencies, and uncertain benefits or risks constrain the knowledge or decisions of participants.  Carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects by means of geologic sequestration are pursued in such an environment.  In these circumstances, entrepreneurs can seek to employ two distinct types of tools:  the game-changer, being an improvement to the status quo for all those similarly situated, generally achieved through collective or governmental action; and the finesse, being an individualized pursuit of an extraordinary project that is minimally affected by a given legal, business or technological obstacle.  These techniques are illustrated in the case of CCS as to ownership of property rights, carbon dioxide (“CO2”) transportation economics, liability for stored CO2 following the closure of injection wells, inter-agency and federal-state conflicts, competing technologies, and uncertain economic or legal incentives.  The finesse and the game-changer should also be useful concepts for creative solutions in other applications.

India has been famous for arguing that it (and the rest of the developing world) should incur no expense in controlling emissions that cause climate change. The west caused the problem and it should clean it up. That argument is increasingly untenable — both in the fundamental arithmetic of climate change, which is a problem that is impossible to solve without developing country participation, and in the political reality that important western partners will increasingly demand more of India and other developing countries. India’s own public is also demanding more.

The Indian government has outlined a broad plan for what could be done, but the plan still lacks a strategy to inform which efforts offer the most leverage on warming emissions and which are most credible because they align with India’s own interests.

This paper offers a framework for that strategy. It suggests that a large number of options to control warming gases are in India’s own self-interest, and with three case studies it suggests that leverage on emissions could amount to several hundred million tonnes of CO2 annually over the next decade and an even larger quantity by 2030. (For comparison, the Kyoto Protocol has caused worldwide emission reductions of, at most, a couple hundred million tonnes of CO2 per year.) We suggest in addition to identifying self-interest — which is the key concept in the burgeoning literature on “co-benefits” of climate change policy — that it is also important to examine where India and outsiders (e.g., technology providers and donors) have leverage.

One reason that strategies offered to date have remained abstract and difficult to implement is that they are not rooted in a clear understanding of where the Government of India is able to deliver on its promises (and where Indian firms have access to the needed technology and practices). Many ideas are interesting in theory but do not align with the administrative and technological capabilities of the Indian context. As the rest of the world contemplates how to engage with India on the task of controlling emissions it must craft deals that reflect India’s interests, capabilities and leverage on emissions. These deals will not be simple to craft, but there are many precedents for such arrangements in other areas of international cooperation, such as in accession agreements to the WTO.

Coal is the major primary energy which fuels economic growth in China. The original Soviet-style institutions of the coal sector were adopted after the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. But since the end of 1970s there have been major changes: a market system was introduced to the coal sector and the Major State Coalmines were transferred from central to local governments. This paper explains these market-oriented and decentralizing trends and explores their implications for the electric power sector, now the largest single consumer of coal.

The argument of this paper is that the market-oriented and decentralizing reforms in the coal sector were influenced by the changes in state energy investment priority as well as the relationship between the central and local governments in the context of broader reforms within China’s economy. However, these market-oriented and decentralizing reforms have not equally influenced the electric power sector. Since coal is the primary input into Chinese power generation, and power sector reform falls behind coal sector reform, the tension between the power and coal sectors is unavoidable and has raised concerns about electricity shortages.

This study investigates the skill of linear methods for downscaling provincial-scale precipitation over Indonesia from fields that describe the large-scale circulation and hydrological cycle. The study is motivated by the strong link between large-scale variations in the monsoon and the El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon and regional precipitation, and the subsequent impact of regional precipitation on rice production in Indonesia. Three different downscaling methods are tested across five different combinations of large-scale predictor fields, and two different estimates of regional precipitation for Indonesia.

Downscaling techniques are most skillful over the southern islands (Java and Bali) during the monsoon onset or transition season (Sep.-Dec.). The methods are moderately skillful in the southern islands during the dry season (May-Aug.), and exhibit poor skill during the wet season (Jan.-Apr.). In northern Sumatra downscaling methods are most skillful during Jan.-Apr. with little skill at other times of the year. There is little difference between the three different linear methods used to downscale precipitation over Indonesia. Additional analysis indicates that downscaling methods that are trained on the annual cycle of precipitation produce less-biased estimates of the annual cycle of regional precipitation than raw model output, and also show some skill at reconstructing interannual variations in regional precipitation. Most of the downscaling methods' skill is attributed to year-to-year ENSO variations and to the long-term trend in precipitation and large-scale fields.

While the goal of the present study is to investigate the skill of downscaling methods specifically for Indonesia, results are expected to be more generally applicable. In particular, the downscaling models derived from observations have been effectively used to debias the annual cycle of regional precipitation from global climate models. It is expected that the methods will be generally applicable in other regions where regional precipitation is strongly affected by the large-scale circulation.

Future trajectories of food prices, food security, and cropland expansion are closely linked to future average crop yields in the major agricultural regions of the world. Because the maximum possible yields achieved in farmers' fields might level off or even decline in many regions over the next few decades, reducing the gap between average and potential yields is critical. In most major irrigated wheat, rice, and maize systems, yields appear to be at or near 80% of yield potential, with no evidence for yields having exceeded this threshold to date. A fundamental constraint in these systems appears to be uncertainty in growing season weather; thus tools to address this uncertainty would likely reduce gaps. Otherwise, short-term prospects for yield gains in irrigated agriculture appear grim without increased yield potential. Average yields in rainfed systems are commonly 50% or less of yield potential, suggesting ample room for improvement, though estimation of yield gaps for rainfed regions is subject to more errors than for irrigated regions. Several priorities for future research are identified.

In June 2009, a group of experts in climate science, crop modeling, and crop development gathered at Stanford University to discuss the major needs for successful crop adaptation to climate change. To focus discussion over the three day period, the meeting centered on just three major crops – rice, wheat, and maize – given that these provide the bulk of calories to most populations. The meeting also focused on two aspects of climate– extreme high temperatures and extreme low moisture conditions (i.e. drought) – that present substantial challenges to crops in current climate and are likely to become more prevalent through time. Other aspects of climate change such as more frequent flooding or saltwater intrusion associated with rising sea levels were not addressed, although they may also be important.

The current document is split into two sections:

• a brief summary of material presented at the meeting on the current state of climate projections, crop modeling, crop genetic resources and breeding; and
  
• the collective views of participants on major needs for future research and investment, which emerged from discussions over the three day meeting.
  

The main target audiences for the document are donor institutions seeking to invest in climate adaptation, and climate and crop scientists seeking to set research agendas. We intend the term donor institutions to include private foundations, governments, and inter‐governmental organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations. An underlying assumption of the Stanford meeting was that there is a real and growing need to identify specific investment opportunities that will improve food security in the face of climate change. This is reflected, for instance, by the recent G8 announcement of a $20B investment in food security, the expectation of additional resources for adaptation from the Copenhagen Conference in 2009, and the emphasis of the Obama administration on food and climate issues.