The aim of the Workshop was to provide participants with an overview of the current observational and theoretical understanding of climate variation on time scales of decades fo centuries, and to discuss directions for future researc. The topic of this Workshop was similar to that of a portion of the WCRP Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Programme.
The main objectives of the workshop were to survey multi-decade to multi-century integrations which have been performed using both general circulation and simplified conceptual models, and to review obsevations of climate variations on time-scales of decades to centuries.
Among the scientific topics covered were the development and application of statistical methods and tools for analysis of both observational data and output from liong climate model integrations; the problems, uncertainties and required improvements in current climate models, which have been designed and tuned to represent present day climatology and climate variations on short time scales, when applied to multi-decade or multi-century integrations; the design and use of simple conceptual models to understand the dynamics of climate variability on time scales of decades to centuries; and the relevance of the conceptual framework applied in studies of short term term climate varaitions to studies of long term climate variations.
The Workshop was open to scientists from all member countries of the United Nations, IAEA and UNESCO. It included fifteen invited lecturers, eight contributed papers and there were some lively group discussions.
The Editors