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University of Hawai'i |
(808) 956-8856 Telephone |
For Immediate Release: |
April 26, 2000 |
Contact: Gisela E. Speidel, Ph.D. - 956-9252 speidel@soest.hawaii.edu Jerry Comcowich, Ph.D. - 956-4000 comco@soest.hawaii.edu
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Climate Researchers to Meet at University of Hawai`i May 2-5, 2000 |
The University of Hawai`i's International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) will host a meeting next week for climate researchers leading a project involving more than 60 nations. The scientists are members of the Scientific Steering Group of CLIVAR - Climate Variability and Predictability Project - a part of the World Climate Research Programme. They will review progress made on understanding the variability of climate and draw up plans for future research.
Work under CLIVAR seeks to uncover how the climate system - the atmosphere, the ocean, land, and ice masses - is responding to natural processes and to activities of modern society. CLIVAR covers such topics as understanding and predicting El Niño events, monsoons in Asia and the Americas, and African climate variability. Records from corals, ice-cores and tree rings show that climate has always varied, sometimes quickly (in decades) and sometimes slowly. Population increase and pressure on resources mean that future changes, whether natural or due to human activity, have serious social and economic consequences. A major task of CLIVAR, therefore, is to understand and predict the response of the climate system to increases in greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Such predictions are already helping economies and societies in many parts of the world to adapt. CLIVAR is the project that links together in a 15-year program these various research activities. Funding for CLIVAR comes from national governments and agencies. CLIVAR's research results are and will be of relevance to everyone.
The IPRC, which is hosting the meeting, is a climate research center founded to gain greater understanding of the nature and causes of climate variation in the Asian-Pacific region, to study whether such variations can be predicted, and to discover how global climate changes affect the region. Established in the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences at the University of Hawai`i under the "U.S.-Japan Common Agenda for Cooperation in Global Perspective" in October 1997, the IPRC is a collaborative effort between Japan and the United States and one of the fastest growing climate research centers in the world.
