- News from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society

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Photo Essay:
Into the Heart of Dryness

Explore the country of Niger in a visual essay and learn how IRI and its partners have been training meteorological and hydrological professionals to better understand and anticipate climate risks in the Sahel, one of the poorest and most climate-vulnerable regions in the world.
Read more.

IRI Partners at Rio+20
Sir John Beddington has a recap of Agriculture and Rural Development Day at Rio+20. The event was sponsored by IRI's partner CCAFS and others. While Rio+20 might not have been a home run like many had hoped, CCAFS communications manager Vanessa Meadu writes that language and outcomes from the day also fed directly into the final Rio+20 text resulting in "small wins for small farmers."

IN THE SCIENCE PRESS

Stochastic decadal climate simulations for the Berg and Breede Water Management Areas, Western Cape province, South Africa. Water Resources Research. Arthur Greene, Molly Hellmuth, Trevor Lumsden. This work addresses the gap that presently exists between the need for regional near-term (out to a few decades in the future) climate information and current prediction capabilities for the decadal time scale. By combining information from observations and climate models with theoretical expectations regarding future climate trajectories, the authors generate an ensemble of future climate scenarios with quantifiable likelihoods of occurrence for this water-stressed region.

Skill of Real-Time Seasonal ENSO Model Predictions during 2002-11: Is Our Capability Increasing? Bull. American Met. Soc. Anthony Barnston, Michael Tippett, Shuhua Li, David DeWitt. The researchers evaluated the skill of real-time model predictions of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions during the 2002-2011 period and compared them to skill levels documented in the 1990s. The findings indicate positive but

slow progress in improving ENSO prediction capability, and that for the first time, dynamical prediction models are more skillful on average than statistical models. Dynamical models use data describing the current state of the ocean and atmosphere, and use the laws of physics of the ocean and atmosphere to develop predictions. Statistical models, by contrast, do not use such physical laws, but rely on patterns in a long history of ENSO-related observations that span a long historical record such as the last thirty or more years.

IRI IN THE NEWS

Tarun Gogoi woos US investors. (Times of India). view

Unprecedented May Heat In Greenland, Temperature Hits Stunning 76.6°F. (ThinkProgress). view

CURRENT SEASONAL RAINFALL FORECAST

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society was established as a cooperative agreement between
the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office and Columbia University.
It is part of The Earth Institute, Columbia University.