The Center for
Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies

The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice-President Al Gore, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." The IPCC was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 1988. The IPCC assesses scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. Several COLA scientists have been involved in the IPCC process. Dr. Jagadish Shukla is a member of the IPCC and is a lead author on a chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) entitled, "Climate Change 2007, The Physical Science Basis". The chapter Dr. Shukla co-authored is "Climate Models and their Evaluation." Drs. Paul Dirmeyer and Ben Kirtman were contributing authors to the AR4, and Dr. E. Schneider, as editor of the journal, Climate Dynamics, helped expedite the review of papers published in support of the AR4. Drs. Zeng-Zhen Hu, V. Krishnamurthy and Schneider contributed to the IPCC Third Assessment Report in 2001. Understanding the mechanisms of climate variability, determining the limits of climate predictability, and using climate models to better predict and understand the Earth's climate are important components of COLA research.