Under Theme III, CICAR research goals are to develop tools and methods that take in climate and climate change information to support impact assessments and decision making in the areas of health, policy, water resources, and agriculture. Here CICAR draws on the strength of the different parts of the Earth Institute, a closely linked network of academic units and institutes at Columbia University, seeking to utilize science and technological tools to improve conditions for the world’s poor while preserving the natural systems that support life on Earth. As part of this goal, EI scientists study the impact of climate variability and change on society and ways to improve communication between climate scientists and stakeholders around the world.

With the ability to successfully predict seasonal to interannual climate variability, the need to develop tools and methodology to communicate climate information to the user community became a NOAA priority. In recognition of this need, NOAA called for the establishment of an institute dedicated to the study and application of end-to-end climate forecasting methodology. The International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) was established through collaboration between NOAA and Columbia University and is housed on the grounds of the Lamont campus in Palisades, New York. This was in clear recognition of the strengths of LDEO and Columbia University’s research in physical climate sciences and in the social, health, and policy sciences. Since then, the link between the study of the physical climate system and its predictability and the social science community at Columbia University has intensified, leading to the building of expertise in research consistent with the third goal of CICAR. CICAR provides the opportunity to broaden the scope of climate applications research beyond the realm of seasonal to interannual variability to address climate change assessments and decadal variability.

In the context of this theme’s goal to develop methods that facilitate the effective dissemination of the forecasts to decision makers, the EI Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) operates a number of programs that specialize in communicating scientific data and information. For example, CIESIN has operated the U.S. Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO) for nine years. GCRIO has been the major vehicle for dissemination of global change information from across agencies in the US Global Change Research Program. Although most of the users are from the United States, people from 160 countries annually consult GCRIO. Its users download over 2 million page views per year. NOAA is providing direct support for GCRIO. CIESIN also has a NOAA grant to study the ways that local policy and decision makers in the New York metropolitan area seek, evaluate and use climate change information. The goal of the project, undertaken with scientists from GISS and Montclair State University, is to develop a prototype climate change information system that can be a model for urban climate change information systems in other areas. ICSU has designated CIESIN as the World Data Center on Human Interactions in the Environment and the organization serves as a gateway to climate information for many decision makers.

Additional expertise in social applications of climate research are developed at the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR) at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) – also an EI research and education unit. CCSR and GISS scientists conduct extensive work in the context of the national regional climate assessment process. They also study the use of regional models for the purpose of downscaling global climate model results to a regional scale.

At the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering (DEEE) scientists are conducting research on land surface interactions and climate, water resource management and hydrological processes including the use of climate information for planning and management, carbon sequestration, and novel methods of energy use.