WCRP OSC climate research in service to society

Goals and Vision

A better understanding of the behaviour 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.