OCEAN CARBON SINKS AND INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE POLICY

Terrestrial sinks have entered the Kyoto Protocol as offsets for carbon sequestration, but ocean sinks have escaped attention. Ocean sinks are as unexplored and uncertain as were the terrestrial sinks at the time of negotiation. It is not unlikely that certain countries will advocate the inclusion of ocean carbon sinks to reduce their emission reduction obligations. We use a simple model of the international market for carbon dioxide emissions to evaluate who would gain or loose from allowing for ocean carbon sinks. Our analysis is restricted to information on anthropogenic carbon sequestration within the exclusive economic zone of a country. Like the carbon sequestration of business as usual forest management activities, natural ocean carbon sequestration applies at zero costs. The total amount of anthropogenic ocean carbon sequestration is large, also in the exclusive economic zones. As a consequence, it substantially alters the costs of emission reduction for most countries. Countries such as Australia, Denmark, France, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Portugal would gain substantially, and a large number of countries would benefit too. Current net exporters of carbon permits, particularly Russia, would gain less and oppose the inclusion of carbon sinks.carbon dioxide emission reduction, emission permit trade, exclusive economic zones, ocean sinks

Investigation of the role of thermal boundary layer processes in initiating convection under the NASA SPACE Field Program

The current NWS ground based network is not sufficient to capture the dynamic or thermodynamic structure leading to the initiation and organization of air mass moist convective events. Under this investigation we intend to use boundary layer mesoscale models (McNider and Pielke, 1981) to examine the dynamic triggering of convection due to topography and surface thermal contrasts. VAS and MAN's estimates of moisture will be coupled with the dynamic solution to provide an estimate of the total convective potential. Visible GOES images will be used to specify incoming insolation which may lead to surface thermal contrasts and JR skin temperatures will be used to estimate surface moisture (via the surface thermal inertia) (Weizel and Chang, 1988) which can also induce surface thermal contrasts. We will use the SPACE-COHMEX data base to evaluate the ability of the joint mesoscale model satellite products to show skill in predicting the development of air mass convection. We will develop images of model vertical velocity and satellite thermodynamic measures to derive images of predicted convective potential. We will then after suitable geographic registration carry out a pixel by pixel correlation between the model/satellite convective potential and the 'truth' which are the visible images. During the first half of the first year of this investigation we have concentrated on two aspects of the project. The first has been in generating vertical velocity fields from the model for COHMEX case days. We have taken June 19 as the first case and have run the mesoscale model at several different grid resolutions. We are currently developing the composite model/satellite convective image. The second aspect has been the attempted calibration of the surface energy budget to provide the proper horizontal thermal contrasts for convective initiation. We have made extensive progress on this aspect using the FIFE data as a test data set. The calibration technique looks very promising

Guidelines for designing augmented reality games

The growing popularity of augmented reality (AR) games in both a research and more recently commercial context has led for a need to take a closer look at design related issues which impact on player experience. While issues relating to this area have been considered, to date most of the emphasis has been on the technology aspects. Furthermore it is almost always assumed that the augmented reality element in itself will provide a sufficient experience for the player. This has led to a need to evaluate what makes a successful augmented reality game. In this paper we present a set of design guidelines which are drawn from experiences of three mixed reality games. The guidelines provide specific guidance on relationships between real and virtual space, social interaction, use of AR technologies, maintaining consistent themes and implicitly address higher level aspects such as presence within a particular augmented reality place

The magic lens box: simplifying the development of mixed reality games

Mixed Reality games are becoming more and more popular these days and offer unique experiences to the players. However, development of such games typically still requires expert knowledge and access to Mixed Reality toolkits or frameworks. In this paper, we present the so-called Magic Lens Box that follows a different approach. Based on standard hardware The Magic Lens Box enables game designers with little technological background to create their own Mixed Reality games in a simple yet powerful fashion. We further outline the development process of the magic Lens Box, describe the conceptual model behind it and discuss three games that have been developed with our system. Evaluation of these games shows the viability of our approach, enabling the creation of a variety of rather different Mixed reality games while keeping the development process simple