ARENA is the Australian Renewable Energy Agency,
an independent agency established by the Australian Government on 1 July 2012. We have two objectives: to improve the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, and to increase the supply of renewable energy in Australia.
Unfortunately, ARENA was one of the losers from the recent Australian budget and might not be around much longer.
As well as providing several years of geeky suspense from its launch in 2004 until its comet landing later this year, the Rosetta mission is replete with acronyms. One of the most ORCA-worthy of these is SESAME, the Surface Electric Sounding and Acoustic Monitoring Experiments.
Three instruments measure properties of the comet’s outer layers. The Cometary Acoustic Sounding Surface Experiment (CASSE) measures the way in which sound travels through the surface. The Permittivity Probe (PP) investigates its electrical characteristics, and the Dust Impact Monitor (DIM) measures dust falling back to the surface.
Not a space-related word but still a good ad hoc algorithm.
Climate Change is upon us, whether we like/admit it or not. Whilst some are still hopeful that we can halt and reverse the trend in emissions that has us seeing CO2 and global temperatures outside the range of all human history, others are beginning to devise and test Plan B: Geoengineering (or “Climate Engineering”) our way out of trouble.
One such project is SPICE - Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering.
The SPICE project is investigating the effectiveness of Solar Radiation Management (SRM). SRM involves offsetting the effects of greenhouse gas increases by causing the Earth to absorb less radiation from the Sun.
It should be noted that SPICE are not actually planning/promoting injecting stuff into the atmosphere - it could potentially be really bad news - but instead are “investigating the feasibility, risks and governance associated with Solar Radiation Management”. By the time that things get so bad that we need this sort of stuff - a regrettably probable future in my opinion - it will be too late to start looking into it. (That said, there is a danger that by developing the technology, we make the application more likely. It’s a tricky one!)
SPICE is not too contrived as ORCA acronyms go but then it is not too relevant to climate change/engineering either.
h/t: BBC Discovery.
