Inventory of EU Marine Climate Change Research

CLIVAR - Climate variability and predictability

Project website:
http://www.clivar.org/

Summary information
Funding:	International - World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)
Start date:	1998-01-01
End date:	2013-01-01
Duration:	180 months
Coordinator:	International CLIVAR Project Office (icpo@noc.soton.ac.uk) National Oceanography Centre, Southampton – United Kingdom
Project name:	CLIVAR - Climate variability and predictability
Project summary:	CLIVAR is the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) project that addresses Climate Variability and Predictability, with a particular focus on the role of ocean-atmosphere interactions in climate. It works closely with its companion WCRP projects on issues such as the role of the land surface, snow and ice and the role of stratospheric processes in climate. The challenges for CLIVAR are to develop our understanding of climate variability, to apply this to provide useful prediction of climate variability and change through the use of improved climate models, and to monitor and detect changes in our climate system. As CLIVAR science advances, it becomes increasingly important and possible to address all aspects of the climate system, including the role of biogeochemical cycles, and to build the application of CLIVAR science to societal applications and impacts. To enable the necessary scientific interactions, CLIVAR looks to partnership with other international programmes, especially the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and the International Programme of Biodiversity Science (DIVERSITAS). The specific objectives of CLIVAR are: • To describe and understand the physical processes responsible for climate variability and predictability on seasonal, interannual, decadal, and centennial time-scales, through the collection and analysis of observations and the development and application of models of the coupled climate system, in cooperation with other relevant climate-research and observing programmes. • To extend the record of climate variability over the time-scales of interest through the assembly of quality-controlled paleoclimatic and instrumental data sets. • To extend the range and accuracy of seasonal to interannual climate prediction through the development of global coupled predictive models. • To understand and predict the response of the climate system to increases of radiatively active gases and aerosols and to compare these predictions to the observed climate record in order to detect the anthropogenic modification of the natural climate signal. A complete overview about CLIVAR can be found in the CLIVAR Handbook (see project website).