Climate Sense

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World Climate Research Programme:

the scientific foundation for climate

information in the 21st century

Ghassem R. Asrar and Antonio J. Busalacchi, World Climate Research Programme

he World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) was estab-

lished in 1980 under the joint sponsorship of the World

Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the International

Council for Science (ICSU). Since 1993 the Intergovernmental

Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has also spon-

sored the programme. The main objectives of the WCRP are to

determine the predictability of climate and the effect of human

activities on it. These objectives went on to serve as the foun-

dation of today’s adaptation and mitigation response strategies

to changes in climate. Due to the WCRP, it is now possible for

climate scientists to monitor, simulate and project global climate

– in turn this information can be used for governance, in decision

making and in support of a wide range of practical applications.

During the past 30 years, new disciplines of climate science have

emerged that transcend the traditional fields of atmosphere, oceans

and land sciences. Many of these new disciplines have led to routine

seasonal to interannual climate predictions, as well as longer-term

climate projections. In parallel with such studies of the natural fluc-

tuations of the coupled climate system, coupled climate models driven

by changes in the radiative forcing of greenhouse-gas emissions have

also been developed. Such models provided the climate change projec-

tions that underpinned the assessments of the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the United Nations programme

on atmospheric ozone depletion/recovery.

While climate is a global phenomenon, the effects of its variabil-

ity are felt at lower levels, including region, city and community.

Furthermore, climate change affects different sectors of the global

economy – such as agriculture and food production, water resources

and fresh water distribution, energy and transportation, leisure and

tourism, and environment and health – in different ways.

The need for climate information by different regions and sectors

must be taken into account when organizing a network of experts

to carry out required research and assessments in the future. The

international scientific community is adjusting its research, model-

ling and observational priorities to respond to this need as rapidly

as possible. This change is also reflected in scientific coordination

programmes such as the WCRP and the International Geosphere-

Biosphere Programme. The goal is to have in place, by the middle

of the next decade, regional assessments that are well organized and

based on the best scientific understanding and knowledge available at

the time. Further developing and sustaining this network of regional

and local experts constitutes a major challenge, especially

for less developed and developing regions of the world.

Managing the risks and benefits associated with

climate will involve managing the entire continuum of

activities relating to it. This process includes: observing

and understanding the Earth’s climate system; projecting

and assessing climate variability and change for different

regions and economic sectors; and ultimately delivering

this knowledge to decision makers. Transferring knowl-

edge gained from research to decision and policy makers

stands a far greater chance of success if the scientific

community coordinates its research with the develop-

ment of alternative solutions for mitigating the adverse

impacts (and realizing the full benefits of) climate

change for different regions and economic sectors.

Such a ‘solution-based’ approach requires greater coor-

dination and integration by the WCRP and its sibling

international research programmes. For example, tack-

ling the anticipated changes in regional temperature and

precipitation may require a different set of agricultural

and food production practices to those used today. As

such, climate expertise must be supplemented with

agronomic expertise to assess which crops are most suit-

able for the emerging climate conditions, as well as to

develop best practices for optimum production under

such conditions.

The scientific foundation for climate prediction

The scientific foundation for today’s climate prediction

and projection techniques can be traced back to the

physically-based numerical models of atmospheric and

oceanic circulations created in the 1950s and 1960s.

Over the subsequent few decades a major limiting factor

was the lack of high quality, long-range climate obser-

vations. The advent of remote sensing and space-based

Earth observations helped significantly to address this

limitation. These observations provided the first global

perspective of the Earth’s atmospheric circulation and

climate system. This, in turn, enabled global climate

studies and the identification of the key physical climate

system processes.

The idea of an international research programme on

climate change came into being at the Eighth World

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