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With formal negotiations on the new international climate change treaty due to open in three weeks time, Independent readers are starting to work with the Debategraph community to develop a comprehensive map of the issues around climate change that are confronting the negotiators.

Climateprediction.net is a distributed computing project to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2080 and to test the accuracy of climate models. To do this, we need people around the world to give us time on their computers - time when they have their computers switched on, but are not using them to their full capacity.

The temptation to interpret model noise as forecast information invades our living rooms every night. TV weather-forecast maps look so realistic it is hard not to over-interpret tiny details - to imagine that the band of rain passing over Oxfordshire at noon next Saturday requires postponing a barbecue. Rain may indeed be likely somewhere in the area sometime on Saturday, but the details we see on TV forecasts are noise from the models. I think we are having exactly the same problem with climate projections.

ESSENCE is an immersive internet experiment, and a face-face conference. It invites human-centred technologists, climate scientists, policymakers, and any other stakeholder with a view on some part of the climate change debate, to experience and reflect on a new generation of software tools. Build, structure, summarise and navigate the science and policy arguments underpinning climate challenge. Think of it as a visual Wikipedia, a collective intelligence, to organise the key issues, options and arguments.

Our vision is that interactive, accessible computer simulations help spark action that stabilizes the climate. And we've got simulation tools and resources for communicators and analysts to help make that vision happen.

ESSENCE: E-Science/Sensemaking/Climate Change is an immersive internet experiment, culminating in a face-face conference. We want to build a collective intelligence resource on the climate change debate. This is analogous to Wikipedia, but decidely not enforcing a "neutral point of view". We are going to put through their paces tools tuned for mapping the key issues, options, arguments and evidence on the different dillemmas - and reflect on how effective the current tools are.

Essays and research supporting the idea that global warming poses a clear threat to humanity, that it is largely caused by human activity, and that solutions to the problems of climate change lie within human reach.

It is now recognised that the developed world is struggling to meet its carbon-reduction targets, while emissions by China and India have soared. Meanwhile, signs suggest that the climate is even more sensitive to atmospheric CO2 levels than was previously thought.

The report, "SMART 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age," was developed by The Climate Group in partnership with the Global e-Sustainbility Initiative (GeSI), and looks at how information technology can play a positive role in fighting climate change.

ESSENCE is the world's first global climate collective intelligence event - designed to bring together scientists, industrialists, campaigners and policy makers, and the emerging set of web-based sensemaking tools, to pool and deepen our understanding of the issues and options facing the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009.

"We don't think we have the right kind of tools to help decision makers plan for the future," said Jack Fellows, the vice president for corporate affairs of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of 71 universities. Comment: this is an opportunity for improved sensemaking tools.

Reduced to its essence, China and other developing nations want infusions of both capital and technology from the developed world to help them cut emissions.

The Earth System Grid (ESG) integrates supercomputers with large-scale data and analysis servers located at numerous national labs and research centers to create a powerful environment for next generation climate research. This portal is the primary point of entry into the ESG.

reducing black carbon is one of a number of relatively quick and simple climate fixes using existing technologies

Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in pushing up global temperatures but they say that emerging giants like China and India must also step up to the plate and take quantifiable action. Developing and poorer nations hit back with the argument that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with global warming's inevitable impacts.

The South Atlantic Anomaly (or SAA) is the region where Earth's inner van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the planet's surface. Thus, for a given altitude, the radiation intensity is greater within this region than elsewhere. The van Allen radiation belts are symmetric with the Earth's magnetic axis, which is tilted with respect to the Earth's rotational axis by an angle of ~11 degrees. Additionally, the magnetic axis is offset from the rotational axis by ~450 kilometers (280 miles). Because of the tilt and offset, the inner van Allen belt is closest to the Earth's surface over the south Atlantic ocean, and farthest from the Earth's surface over the north Pacific ocean.