A California utilities group has given Iowa State a $590,000 grant to compare current weather and climate models and determine how human activity affects the global climate.

The Electric Power Research Institute of Palo Alto, Calif. gave the ISU International Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics (IITAP) the grant for a three-year contract.

Gene Takle, professor of agronomy and atmospheric sciences and senior member of the study, hopes the results of the study will help world leaders and the general population understand the impact human activity and industrialization has on the world’s climate.

“The predictions are to be used to understand man’s activity on the environment,” said James Vary, acting director of the IITAP.

While one purpose of the study is to arm decision makers with the predicted effect of their decisions on the global climate, another is to predict long-term shifts in climate change. In an agricultural economy like Iowa, the weather plays a very large role in state economics, Vary said.

The economy is dependent on the weather and a shift in climate can produce a longer or shorter growing season and drier or wetter summers. These shifts can produce “huge differences in agriculture production,” Takle said.

Besides shifts in climate like temperature and moisture, the team also hopes to predict other events like hurricanes, floods and droughts. Events like these involve serious risk for area residents, insurance companies and farmers.

“Extreme events have the most impact on society, whether hurricanes, floods or heat waves, Takle said. “Extreme weather messes up our plans and increases our risk,” he added.

Takle said he hopes to answer questions like, “Was the drought of ’88 the drought of the decade, the century or should it be expected more frequently because of global warming,” through his work with the study.

The Project to Intercompare Regional Climate Simulations (PIRCS) will improve computer weather models and climate predictions by comparing the results from different models of the same weather event and deciding which models make the most accurate predictions.

Using a computer model to manipulate the conditions leading up to an event like the 1988 drought, the scientists will see which models made the most accurate predictions. They will decide if the models “are smart enough to give rain at the right time of day and for the right reasons,” Takle said.

“By comparing several models we can make improvements in all models and make longer term predictions in climate,” Takle said. “Or we can create new models that have the best characteristics of all existing models,” Takle added.

While the research at ISU will focus on central United States climate during two certain periods, the drought of 1988 and the floods of 1993, the scope of the project is worldwide with research teams across the globe.

The results of the project will be delivered to the United Nations. These predictions will help world leaders assess the health and future of agricultural and economic development and plan accordingly, Vary said.

Much of the research will focus on the environmental impact of human activity and the changes we can expect because of it. “Humans have a direct impact on global and regional environments and these models will allow the decision makers to see what changes lay ahead if we continue to alter our environment in specific ways, like deforestation and emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” Takle said.