The Challenge Unlike the weather we experience every day, Earth’s climate changes relatively slowly, varying from year to year and over millennia. Clues to possible future climate changes can be revealed by studying the past. We have modern climate records dating back about 150 years, but prior to that, accurate thermometers, wind gauges and other essential measuring devices did not exist. While strong trends, such as those associated with global warming, can often be seen in the modern record, the record is too short to decipher other important changes that occur over decades or longer. Extending our modern record into the distant past requires good “proxies” of important environmental variables, such as temperature, precipitation, snow and ice cover. These proxies are imperfect and therefore reconstructions of past climates are subject to ambiguities that must be carefully analyzed. Earth’s climate also varies regionally. We see this readily when, for example, cold winters in Labrador are accompanied by warm winters in Scandinavia. This regional variability complicates the analysis of climate change. It means that we need data from multiple regions to see patterns of change that can clarify seemingly contradictory findings. The inherent complexity of Earth’s changing climate—occurring over short and long time frames and affecting various regions of the globe differently—presents a formidable challenge to any scientific endeavor, be it an observational program, research analysis, or a modeling effort. The Strategy There are clear ways to meet the above challenges. An aggressive development of new instrumentation will make it possible to routinely measure some key climate variables in the ocean that today require extensive laboratory analyses. While El Niño is now widely recognized as an important climate phenomenon in which the ocean plays a fundamental role, we must make progress to understand other connections between the oceans and the atmosphere that affect climate change. Scientists have made progress in deciphering the patterns of climate change variability, and we can now target specific geographic regions for fieldwork and analysis that will sort out seemingly contradictory results in past climate reconstructions. Better models of the ocean will be critical in reconstructing the modern ocean circulation record, giving us a still short, but broad array of important climate-related variables. These improved models can then be used to test past climates, as a tool for improving the prediction of future ones. Improved models can also better assess ambiguities in proxy reconstructions, and lead to a better understanding of regional climate variability, past and present. And securing funds from non-federal sources can significantly improve our ability to sustain key oceanic climate time series in the presence of a risk-adverse, time-dependent federal funding arena. The Approach The Ocean and Climate Change Institute can best make progress by taking an approach that focuses on the value added science and engineering that WHOI does best. The Institute has selected a few key themes and is working to make substantial contributions to knowledge in these areas through innovative research and sustained measurement programs. Capitalizing on our strong educational culture, the Institute aims to be a magnet for highly qualified graduate and post-graduate researchers and a catalyst for mentoring the next generation of climate scientists. Our approach in the Ocean & Climate Change Institute is to:
Last updated: October 8, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||
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