A cave on the northwestern coast of Sumatra holds a remarkable record of big tsunamis in the Indian Ocean. Scientists are using the site to help determine the frequency of catastrophes like the event of 26 December 2004.
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Complex Insight - Understanding our world
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A few things the Symbol Research team are reading. Complex Insight is curated by Phillip Trotter (www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-trotter) from Symbol Research
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Phillip Trotter
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Biotech, farmer associations key for climate adaptation - panel Reuters AlertNet (blog) LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - An increasingly extreme climate is presenting new challenges to farmers across the world, and biotechnology and greater...
Phillip Trotter's insight:
The potential for genetically modified crops and relation to climate change - which recently helped drive Monsanto to acquire The Climate Corporation is once again in the headlines. At the recent Iowa discussion, five farmers from Malawi, India, Portugal, Argentina and Kenya said they were strong believers in using biotech crops to survive and thrive in the face of a changing climate, and said that farmers needed to share ideas and help each other improve farming techniques. Trust.org does a great job in summarizing the ideas discussed at the event. Worth reading. 
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Overfishing and pollution are part of the problem, scientists say, warning that mass extinction of species may be inevitable
Phillip Trotter's insight:
Increasing acidification has been predicted by climate modellers and oceanographers for many many years. Hopefully we have not also passed the tipping point that they also described...
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Phillip Trotter's insight:
Great summary of the IPCC report graphics. The IPCC is the unit of the UN that deals with climate change and global warming - sumarizing current research in climatology as a the basis for governmental advice and action. The output of more than 800 climatologists and scientits from 85 countries as authors and editors in the three working groups the IPCC summary report makes depressing reading. Heavily argued and debated (the report received 21,400 comments from 659 experts on its first draft, and then 31,422 more comments from 800 scientists and 26 governments on its second draft) provides the evidence that global warming is a human driven occurance. In other words its our fault that our planet is getting hotter and extreme weather events are occuring as a result. Possibly the scariest thought of all - is that many climatoligists believe the report to be a conservative estimate of what lies in store... Check out the summary graphics and then if you have time - the report summary is available here: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf
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Scientists believe they have identified a time in history that provides the most complete picture of how the planet might respond to rising CO2 levels.
Phillip Trotter's insight:
Yet another good article from the BBC future team - worth a read.The Pliocene era happened on earth just over 3.2 million years ago. UK scientists believe that it could be the best chance so far of revealing the consequences of human-induced climate change, since its a period in Earth’s climate history, where everything like the planet’s orbit and the position of the continents closely match conditions of today, but with slightly higher levels of CO2 –similar to those we are predicted to see by the end of the century. As a result they think geological information trapped in rock and sediment layers could help modelers understand and make informed predications about how the planet will respond to expected climate change. click on the image or title to learn more.
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Phillip Trotter's insight:
New research that tracked a broad look at precipitation patterns found that they have already shifted beyond the bounds of natural variations..
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The severity of climate-related disasters is often measured by the number of lives lost, the financial losses for the economy or the costs of recovery. But how do disasters affect the poor? A new report from the Overseas Development Institute explores the relationship between disasters and poverty. The report highlights the potential for natural hazards to spiral into human catastrophes if they entrench poverty that already exists, by pulling vulnerable people down into the poverty trap as their assets and livelihoods vanish. Via Eugene Ch'ng
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Must read...
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Washington Post (blog)
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Good overview of 25 years of climate change research and the consistency of findings.
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How climate scientists test, test again, and use their simulation tools.
Phillip Trotter's insight:
Good article on ars technica explaining the processes used to create global climate simulation models. While a little overly simplified - an interesting read none-the-less and some good pointers and researchers highlighted which are worth following up.
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Sumatra's proximity to the Indo-Australia and Sunda tectonic plate boundary, and the giant earthquakes that occur there, means its shores are at risk of major inundations.Understanding how often these occur is important for policy and planning in the region. In the floor of the cave, encoded in the depositions of sand between layers of bat guano is a tsunami record providing detailed event histories from about 7,500 to 3,000 years ago that helps show the frequency of tsunamis in the region.