Innovative Partnership Launches Freeware Online Climate Simulation

May 26, 2009 by Andrew P. Jones

C-LearnA new partnership of companies and NGOs committed to open source climate simulations has launched a freeware climate decision support tool.

Check it out here — click on the big “C-Learn” banner.

C-Learn is the more accessible, online version of the C-ROADS simulation, which was recently seen in US State Department Special Envoy Jonathan Pershing’s plenary address in Bonn Germany to the UNFCCC. Now you can explore how changes in fossil fuel emissions from three parts of the world, plus deforestation and afforestation, will affect CO2 concentrations, global temperature, and sea level rise. And you can make your own graphs to show others your simulation experiments.

It also means that anyone who wants to run a mock-UN negotiation policy exercise such as “the Copenhagen Climate Exercise” (now “World Climate”) has a simulator to back them up.

C-Learn has been created out of Sustainability Institute and emerges from a partnership called Climate Interactive, which uses “open source” approaches to supporting effective climate action. MIT is the lead university. Corporations involved include Fidelity Investments and Citigroup. Foundations include Morgan Family Foundation, Active Philanthropy, and Zennstrom Philanthropies. NGOs include SoL — the Society for Organizational Learning. Companies include Ventana Systems, ifPeople, and Forio Systems. And it influences climate policy via Bob Corell and the Climate Action Initiative.

Here’s more information on the sponsorstechnical specs, who built it, and sim hosting on Forio.

Next week you would be welcome at an open webinar on this and our other simulation tools.

Try the sim, give us feedback, and let us know how you are using it!  Send it to climateinteractive [at] sustainer [dot] org, send all your information on our Climate Interactive site, or leave a comment here.