Table of Contents

Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Participating Agencies and Executive Offices

Ad hoc Working Group on Climate Modeling

Foreword

Executive Summary

1. Background

2. Summary of Findings

3. Summary of recommen- dations

4. Final Comments

Charge to the Working Group 

Main Report

1. Purpose

2. Current Situation

3. Scope of Document / Underlying Definitions and Assumptions

4. Elements of Climate Science

5. Issues of Computational Systems

6. Human resources

7. Management / Business Practices / Institutional models

8. Recommen- dations

9. Reference Documents

10. Endnotes

Full Report (PDF)

Managers in all the Agencies are confronted with a number of human resource problems.[21] There are several funded activities at both government laboratories and universities who are seeking climate scientists to fill similar positions, for example, in the development of the next generation of physical parameterizations. Qualified scientists to fill these positions are rare, with advertisements often drawing no candidates with sufficient expertise. Furthermore, in recent months, both Japanese and European Centers are recruiting prominent U.S. scientists. U.S. science organizations are often dependent, already, on immigration of foreign students, and the presence of strong foreign centers attracts these students away from the U.S. It is clear that there are not adequate scientific personnel for all of the currently existing groups to develop comprehensive capabilities. Further, currently existing activities must be the basis of any timely, strategic solution to address the gap between needs and existing capabilities.

There is another significant pressure on the human resource pull that comes from the booming information technology economic sector. Information Technology professionals who are needed to complement scientific personnel are attracted to higher paying jobs in non-scientific businesses. Science-related computer jobs are increasingly viewed as a niche profession and do not attract career-oriented computational experts. Most U.S. climate-science centers are seeing increased turnover in computational positions, with a net migration away from the field. Significant numbers of Earth scientists are leaving the field after school, before accepting a first scientific position. In order to compete with the non-scientific information technology job market, scientific organizations need to offer not simply competitive salaries, but development of job skills that are attractive to mainstream professionals and career paths comparable to the field as a whole.