SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS
Goals and Vision
A better understanding of the behavior of the climate system and its interactions with other Earth system components is critical to predict its future evolution, reduce vulnerability to high impact weather and climate events, and sustain life.
This need is perhaps greater than ever before given that humans have emerged as the dominant agent of future change.
Progress will require, moreover, an increasingly holistic approach across scientific disciplines, as well as an unprecedented commitment to the development of a diverse and talented future workforce.
To advance its attack on such challenges, the WCRP will assemble for the first time ever its entire research community, and engage other key international research programmes, in a major Open Science Conference (OSC) in October 2011.
Through a unique synthesis of presented research findings, the OSC will assess our current state of knowledge on climate variability and change, identify the most urgent scientific issues and research challenges, and ascertain how the WCRP can best facilitate research and develop partnerships critical for progress.
Anticipated Outcomes
The WCRP OSC represents an exclusive opportunity to assemble the international scientific community working to advance understanding and prediction of variability and change of the Earth’s physical climate system on all space and time scales. The OSC will facilitate cross-fertilization across the diverse research communities within the WCRP, as well as with other international research programmes, including the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP).
The OSC will appraise the current state of climate science, thereby making a measurable contribution on the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will identify key opportunities and challenges in observations, modeling, analysis and process research required to understand and predict responses of the Earth as a system.
By entraining as many young scientists and students as possible from across the world, including less-developed and developing countries, the OSC will facilitate growth of the diverse future workforce needed to meet the increasingly complex scientific challenges of the future.
Climate Research in Service to Society
24-28 October 2011
Denver, Colorado, USA
WCRP Open Science Conference
Climate Research in Service to Society
Dr. Ghassem R. Asrar is a member of the Scientific Organizing Committee. He currently the Director of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) in Geneva, Switzerland. Prior to this position, he served as the Deputy Administrator for Natural Resources and Agricultural Systems with... Agricultural Research Service (ARS), of the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 2006-2008, after 20 years of service with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Dr. Asrar served as the chief scientist for the Earth Observing System in the Office of Earth Science at NASA Headquarters prior to being named as the Associate Administrator for Earth Science in 1998. While in his position of chief scientist, he led an international team developing the scientific priorities and measurements to be obtained from a series of advanced Earth-orbiting satellites that provided fundamental new insights into the connections between Earth’s land, oceans, atmosphere, ice and life. He also established the NASA Earth System Science graduate fellowship and New Investigators Programs to support training of the next generation of Earth scientists and engineers, that have graduated more than 1000 recipients to date.
During his tenure as Associate Administrator for Earth Science, NASA program achieved successful launches of more than 20 Earth observing research and operational environmental satellites, and he guided the development of a comprehensive data and information system to manage record amount of useful information resulting from these satellites and serving more than 2 million users each year.
Dr. Asrar is the recipient of U.S. Presidential Distinguished Executive Award (2002), an elected Fellow of American Meteorological Society (2001), and IEEE (2000). He has received numerous awards and honors, including the NASA Exceptional Performance Award in 1997, the AIAA Goddard Memorial Lecture Medal in 1998, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, 1999, NASA Distinguished Leadership Medal, 2000, the Space System Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2006, and Distinguished Alumni Award from the Michigan State University, 2008.
CRYOSPHERE & CLIMATE
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY & DYNAMICS
ATMOSPHERE, OCEANS & CLIMATE
WATER, ENERGY & CLIMATE
Contact Address
WCRP Joint Planning Staff
c/o World Meteorological Organization
7 bis, Avenue de la Paix
Case Postale 2300
1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Phone: +41 22 730 81 11
Fax: +41 22 730 80 36
Email: wcrp@wmo.int
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