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“Quants” vs Old-School Weather Forecasters; Weeds to Feed Billions in Warming World
Climate change heats up ‘quants’ v old school forecast battle. Computer scientists are picking a new fight with old school meteorologists, claiming finally to have cracked the code on weather forecasting at a pivotal, profitable moment for the field, as climate change roils commodities markets and industries. Traditional meteorologists, who look at current weather patterns to make forecasts, have long derided examining historical temperatures as “climatology”, of limited use, at best, when trying to predict the future. But applied mathematicians, some of whom once worked on Wall Street as market-predicting “quants,” see the future in patterns of historical data. After years of tinkering, they say their weather algorithms can blow away traditional forecasting.
How weeds could help feed billions in a warming world. Scientists in the U.S. and elsewhere are conducting intensive experiments to cross hardy weeds with food crops such as rice and wheat. Their goal is to make these staples more resilient as higher temperatures, drought, and elevated CO2 levels pose new threats to the world’s food supply. Red rice, for instance, can adapt to more carbon dioxide and heat by producing more stems and grain — red rice has 80 to 90 percent more seed than cultivated rice. Now, plant breeders and plant physiologists are capitalizing on those traits and counting on all possible sources of genetic variation, including weedy lines of rice, to improve productivity in cultivated crop varieties.
Red rice (right) produces more seed than cultivated rice (left), but it is very difficult to harvest because the seeds shatter.
Source: Daily Climate.
Paul Brown is a retired neuroscience professor whose primary interests are human rights, overpopulation, mass extinction, global warming, and the military-industrial complex. Links to all his Before It’s News postings are at /contributor/pages/189/210/stories.html.
