Researchers at the University of Cape Town hope to use
people's spare computer time to produce a fine-grained climate
model of the African continent. The aim is to better predict the
effects of climate change on regions and improve planning
decisions.
Africans face a greater risk of food shortage from climate
change than other populations, according to the UK government's
Stern Report.
"Declining crop yields, especially in Africa, could leave
hundreds of millions without the ability to produce or purchase
sufficient food," Stern said.
This prompted UCT's Climate
Systems Analysis Group to hook up with IBM to exploit the
World Community Grid (WCG). The WCG is a global virtual
supercomputer of 315,000-plus members with more than 700,000
computers who donate their unused computer time to research.
A better way to predict localised effects of climate change will
let resource managers take decisions that might alleviate adverse
effects, said the organisers. "For example, they could begin
planning an irrigation infrastructure or promoting appropriate
drought-resistant crops."
The project, AfricanClimate@Home, will use the WCG to run
simulations of small regions of Africa and then check them against
actual observations. "Global models do not sufficiently take into
account large lakes, mountains, or plains that can affect the local
climate," said lead researcher Mark Tadross.
Once the models have proved themselves, researchers will run
forecasts about how climate changes may affect that region. People
can then use the data to take decisions on farming, water resources
and economic development.
Stanley Litow, vice president of corporate citizenship and
corporate affairs and president of the IBM International
Foundation, said the WCG has so far run
seven projects, including FightAIDS@Home, which completed five
years of HIV/AIDS research in just six months. More are in the
pipeline.
People can register on www.worldcommunitygrid.org and install a
free, small software program on to their computers. When not busy,
the computers request data from WCG's server and do drug discovery
computations using this data, and send the results back to the
server, prompting it for a new piece of work. A screen saver will
tell individuals when their computers are being used.