Engineers and climate
Weather and climate have been concerned by people from the dawn of civilization to this day. In many regions, the information about weather is essensial for not only the agriculture but also the people's life. Climate variability has affected the activities and the production system of the societies. In the past, weather forecasting was associated with religious activities. But nowadays, the weather forecasting has become more technological. In addition, in the twentieth century, meteorology was born as an exact science.
This evolution of climate from "art" to science brings it much closer to the more traditional technological areas with strong background in physics, allowing for interdisciplinary work and research. (ENGINEERS AND CLIMATE) For example, meteorological records have been used as an input in designing and constructing buildings, ports, ... However, this practice often involved cooperation between meteorologists and engineers. Then, the study of climate and engineering should come together to find the method that acknowledge the current scientific understanding.
Engineers are trained to systematically analyse complex sets of information and to apply systems and critical thinking in designing solutions. With these skills, they will have no difficult understanding the physics and pinciples behind each phenomenon. Moreover, to monitor climate, highly sophisticated instrumental devices are used like sophisticated balloons, aircraft, ships and even orbiting satellites. So the work needs the participation of engineers.
Also, engineers contribute to the decision-making processes at many levels such as laying out the planning of agricultural production, constructing infrastructure, managing water and energy resources,... which are inevitably involved matters related to climate change. A solid understanding of climate variability, both natural and anthropogenic, and the dynamics of the climate system will be required in order to participate in the next great challenge facing humanity: sustainable development.(ENGINEERS AND CLIMATE) And the sustainable solutions to this will need not only the contribution of many physical and social sciences but also the involvement of engineering. Therefore, engineers must prepared knowledge about climate issues.
Furthermore, engineers are inescapably involved in many specific aspects of climate issuses. There are three main aspects that can be named here. Firstly, engineers can apply their skills and creativity to design a better, less poluting and economical industrial systems. That will help reduce the green house effect. Secondly, expertise on climate is required to write the equations that represent the climate phenomena. And the complexity of the climate system is certainly attractive to engineers. Thirdly, engineers are also involved in creating climate modeling, which is a powerful and paradigmatic example of the potential of parallel computing and has become one of the main tools in which we rely to understand and make predictions about the future evolution of the Earth climate.(ENGINEERS AND CLIMATE)
In conlusion, although engineering and climate science are two different realm, the involvement of engineering in solving climate issues is obvious. Moreover, we are clearly bebefit from the collaboration between these two expertises.
ENGINEERS AND CLIMATE,Future Engineering Challenges (n.d.).
Retrieved September, 10 2008 from
http://www.caets.org/nae/naecaets.nsf/(weblinks)/NAEW-5CAJK5?OpenDocument
3 comments:
predicting climate has been a strong desire of human since long time ago. Thus, in the new century, this desire also become one grand challenge of engineering. In the past, there was not any scientific method to help people forecast weather but folk experiences which couldn't draw an exact prediction. Nowadays, there are many sophisticated instruments as well as modernly scientific devices which can help practitioners do their job well. In other words, climate issues are not a unique problem of any individual group but are of human, so it is a win-win situation for both engineering and science as they cooperate in working this kind of issue out because of the accompanied benefit.
it's caught to my attention about the advantages that engineers have. You mentioned that they are trained to think systematically, and they contribute to the process of decision making. They are trained to be responsible to the idea they deliver, so more likely their decision will be right also. In the context of climate change, since this is not a normal issue, their contributions are needed to help making the decision to counteract climate change. People cannot just follow unresponsible decisions by unanonymous person to deal with this huge problem.
Climate and weather is indeed an important factor that has great influences on human beings. Many human activities are related on the climate and weather. In all ages, humans are putting their efforts to understand and change the climate and weather. There is no doubt that engineers play an important role in this field. And in the 21st century, there are more and more we can do to improve our living environment. There will be more and more responsible engineers taking part in this area.
Post a Comment