Please find below the
Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' ratings
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Judges'' comments
SUBJECT: Your proposal has been selected as a Finalist!
Congratulations! Your proposal, "Linking climate information to ecological calendars: an appointment with drought" in the Anticipating Climate Change in the Pamir Mountains contest, has been selected to advance to the Finalists round.
Be proud of your accomplishment – 16 proposals were submitted and only a very small number have been advanced through these two rounds of judging.
As a Finalist, your proposal is eligible for the contest’s Judges Choice award, as well as the contest’s Popular Choice award, which is determined by public voting.
If you haven’t already, you will soon receive an email from the Climate CoLab staff with details about the voting period. If you don’t receive that email within the next day, or have other questions, please contact the Climate CoLab staff at admin@climatecolab.org
All winners will be announced the week after the voting period ends, on September 12, 2015 at midnight Eastern Time.
Both Judges Choice and Popular Choice will receive a special invitation to attend selected sessions at MIT’s SOLVE conference and present their proposals before key constituents in a workshop the next day, where a $10,000 Grand Prize will be awarded. A few select Climate CoLab winners will join distinguished SOLVE attendees in a highly collaborative problem-solving session. Some contests have additional prizes given by the contest sponsor.
Thank you for your work on this very important issue. We’re proud of your proposal, and we hope that you are too. Again, congratulations!
2015 Climate CoLab Judges
Additional comments from the Judges:
This is a proposal to downscale and validate climate models in the Pamir Mountains, with a focus on drought. The proposal excels at integrating western science, and shows respect for the input of guidance of traditional knowledge. The proposal addresses clear and relevant research themes, which are potentially important to the Contest and to climate change in general. The emphasis is on the development of a framework for cooperative work. It takes advantage of Dr. Kassam’s field work on ecological calendars to collect input from local villagers and produce climate outputs that are useful and relevant. Both the approach and the method have considerable appeal as a potentially useful way of helping local communities. It is especially appealing as the approach can be tested for a relatively modest amount. Objectives and tasks are well framed. The project is ambitious and interesting.
On the other hand, the engagement of the local population is not articulated in any significant way and seems negligible. The proposal would be stronger if it better connected to ecological calendars – how could the validated climate forecasts integrate into the calendars? The proposal could be also more participatory – right now it reads as if the proposers will design based on input from villagers: they would have better outcomes if they interacted more often and more iteratively with the villagers. Perhaps by linking with the proposal “Generations working together” this shortcoming can be achieved. The scale of the project is such that it is somewhat difficult to see within the short narrative how the objectives are actually achieved.
Semi-Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' ratings
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Judges'' comments
SUBJECT: Your proposal has been selected as a Semi-Finalist!
Congratulations! Your proposal, Linking Climate Information to Ecological Calendars: An Appointment with Drought in the Anticipating Climate Change in the Pamir Mountains contest, has been selected to advance to the Semi-Finalists round.
You will be able to revise your proposal and add new collaborators if you wish, from now until the revision deadline (June 18, 11:59pm [EDT]).
Judges' feedback are posted under the "Evaluation" tab of your proposal. Please incorporate this feedback in your revisions, or your proposal may not be advanced to the Finalists round. We ask you to also summarize the changes that you made in the comment section of the Evaluation tab.
At the revision deadline, your proposal will be locked and considered in final form. The Judges will undergo another round of evaluation to ensure that Semi-Finalist proposals have addressed the feedback given, and select which proposals will continue to the Finalists round. Finalists are eligible for the contest’s Judges Choice award, as well as for public voting to select the contest’s Popular Choice award.
Thank you for your great work and again, congratulations!
Contest Judges
Judges' Feedback:
Objectives and tasks are well framed. The project is ambitious and interesting. However the scale of the project is such that it is difficult to see within the short narrative how the objectives are actually achieved.
Both the approach and the method have considerable appeal as an potentially useful way of helping local communities. It is especially appealing as the approach can be tested for a relatively modest amount.
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 Mathew Barlow Jun 18, 2015 04:55  | Proposal creator
We thank the judges for their feedback on our proposal.
We have combined the objectives and tasks to allow some more detail on how the objectives will be achieved, and also done some minor editing throughout. The detailed methodology for the climate analysis will closely follow previous research (references 1-15), and the interaction with Dr. Kassam's work on ecological calendars and with regional partners will be informed by the experience of Drs. Lyon and Hoell in climate communication, especially Dr. Hoell's previous work in the Central Asia region with the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS).
We agree that the scale of the project is ambitious and that this creates some difficulties with the 4000 character limit. However, we feel that an ambitious effort is needed here: this is a region where basic aspects of climate variability are not yet well understood, climate projections of precipitation change are uncertain, and current climate models have not been well validated. Therefore, anticipating climate change in the region requires a significant (and combined) focus both on effective communication and on local climate information. We have a sustained interest in the Southwest/Central Asian region (15+ years of research) and would like to help develop or collaborate with a regional network focused on climate science and communication.
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Mathew Barlow Jul 31, 2015 04:33 | Proposal creator
With regard to linking to the proposal “Generations working together,” we have spoken with the team leader for that effort and we are mutually interested in linking proposals. It is not possible to edit the proposal at this stage, so we will note here that we will pursue that, if selected.
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Mathew Barlow Jul 31, 2015 04:14 | Proposal creator
With regard to engagement of, and interaction with, the local population, especially with respect to ecological calendars: that is intended to be a key focus of the proposal and we regret that was not more clear. This engagement would be in collaboration with Dr. Kassam’s team and we would utilize their expertise to determine the best ways to develop and maintain the interaction -- if the proposed work is funded, we expect the climate team will develop collaborations and regular interactions directly with community members and we would plan for at least some members of our team to do field visits in the region. Task 2, "develop locally-relevant climate information,” is intended to focus specifically and directly on collaborating with the local population to determine the most relevant information, but we expect to actively interact with local residents through all stages of the work.
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