COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland will lead a new climate research partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), North Carolina State University and 16 other institutions. The nationwide consortium led by Maryland won a competition for a new NOAA-supported Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS) that will receive up to $93 million in funding over the next five years, with approximately two-thirds of this funding expected to be managed by the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) of the University of Maryland.
"Establishing this Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites is a major step forward in the NOAA-led effort to create a National Climate Service that would provide longer-term forecasts and warnings related to climate change, just as the National Weather Service does for storms and other short term weather changes," said University of Maryland climate scientist Phillip Arkin, director of the new institute. "Our new institute will combine satellite observations with advanced climate change modeling to produce the kinds of services, like long-term regional drought assessments, that such a climate service will provide." The new institute will play a major role in the University of Maryland's CIRUN (Climate Information Responding to Users Needs) Initiative - a cross-campus priority that focuses on the transition from basic research through applied research to support of the need for climate information by end users.
GETTING NEW CICS ("KICKS") OUT OF CLIMATE RESEARCH
In the past decade, the University of Maryland has developed major partnerships with federal agencies and fostered research in areas critical to understanding and responding to climate change, including atmospheric and earth science, satellite remote sensing, climate modeling, and energy and insurance research and policy. ESSIC's existing cooperative agreement with the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and its Cooperative Institute for Climate Studies, which is jointly operated with the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) of NOAA, are two of these partnerships. A third is the Joint Global Change Research Institute (with the Department of Energy). The home for these activities is the University of Maryland's M Square research park, which represents one of the nation's largest clusters of federal and university scientists conducting earth science, weather and climate research.
The newly awarded Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS) will be an outgrowth of the existing University of Maryland-based Cooperative Institute for Climate Studies. The new Cooperative Institute incorporates additional academic and private sector partners into a more comprehensive association that has all three components (data/observations, modeling and climate services) critical to a new climate service.
The new CICS will be directed from two principal locations: the first in Maryland's research park immediately adjacent to the M Square home that NOAA is building for its National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction; and the second associated with the agency's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, NC. NC State University will be the lead institution for the University of North Carolina system and will host an Inter-Institutional Research Institute directed by Dr. Otis Brown in Asheville to partner with the NCDC and build links to climate-related activities in the NC system.
"In the long run, our goal at Maryland and in the new cooperative institute is to develop climate products that will meet social needs and give decision-makers the kind of tailored information that will help them devise more effective adaptation and investment strategies," said Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center Director Antonio Busalacchi. "At this stage, we need to develop better tools that will make our climate change research, predictions, and assessments more useful and actionable," said Busalacchi, who chairs the World Climate Research Programme's Joint Scientific Committee.
A POWERFUL NATIONAL NETWORK
The new institute will focus on collaborative research into satellite observations and Earth System modeling conducted by scientists in the consortium institutions together with researchers in NOAA's Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) and in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) of NOAA and the National Weather Service. Work to turn this data acquisition and modeling research into applications and services will be led by institute researchers working with those in the National Climatic Data Center of NOAA/NESDIS.
The CICS Consortium will be led by scientists from the University of Maryland and NC State University and will include researchers from Princeton University, Howard University, the University of California Irvine, Columbia University, the City University of New York, University of Miami (Florida), Colorado State University, Duke University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Oregon State University, Remote Sensing Systems, the Renaissance Computing Institute of the North Carolina University System, and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Additional capability for public and community outreach and engagement will be provided to the institute by partnerships with Climate Central in Princeton, the North Carolina Arboretum and the Centers for Environmental and Climatic Interaction, a non-profit corporation representing Asheville, North Carolina community interests and organizations related to climate impacts on the environment.
SCIENCE CONTACTS:
Phillip Arkin
CICS Director
301-405-2147
parkin@umd.edu
Antonio Busalacchi
ESSIC Director
301-405-5599
abusalac@umd.edu