New to climate change? Here you have some WEB links to start!!

¿Nuevo en el tema del cambio climatico? Aquí tienes algunos links en la WEB para comenzar!!!

Today, everybody seems to blame climate change for their disgraces. Is the melting of the poles the worst threat? Will tropical diseases spread to today´s cold areas? But, how much of all we hear is likely to occur? I am not asking "how much of all climate change-related stuff we hear is true?", because most of the works published are based on predictions.

If you feel curious, I would recommend you to have a look first on the reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC, which is a renowned international instance. Remember the Al Gore´s movie and the Nobel Prize awarded?, well..the contents is based on the research conducted by the experts from the IPCC.

Next I am posting some WEB links where you can find relevant and trusty information on this topic, climate modeling, ENSO, climate change impacts in mountains, and similar resources. Please, take a look and If you wish, suggest some other links if you think I have omitted some relevant information.

Nihon and Nihongo: Some resources for beginners

Japón e idioma japonés: Recursos en la WEB para principiantes y recién llegados

For leisure, learning languages is always a good alternative. For daily life, learning the local language is quite important to fit into the local society. For personal development, learning a language is key to understand the local culture, because languages are not only composed by translated words connected together by grammatical rules, but also composed by gestures, manners and local customs.

Japanese language and the culture of the country it self have thousands of followers around the world. Several have posted very interesting material over the WEB. Next I am posting some links to sites that I have visited, which can help beginners to enjoy their Nihongo lessons and in general their life in Japan.

Geographic Information Systems GIS: Resources for the old (and wise) ArcView GIS

Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG): Recursos para el viejo y sabio Arcview GIS

Although the commercial software ArcView GIS by ESRI is quite old respect its new version the ArcGIS, it has demonstrated to be a quite useful tool for the processing of information that has geographic attributes, i.e., information with qualitative or quantitative value that has a geographical position (Latitude, Longitude, Elevation), and it is still being used in several educational institutions. Why? because buying it and/or upgrading it into the new ArcGIS version is not cheap!!!

GIS are fundamental tools for the generation of input maps (e.g., catchment delineation, land use maps, vegetation type maps, etc) for environmental models. We may also process geographical data using C++, Fortran and others (maps are just arrays). However, the advantage of using GIS software packages is that they have several functions already programmed. By the way, Matlab is also an alternative.

In this post I am showing some links on resources related to the use of ArcView in environmental modelling.