Climate Scientist to Lead International Research Institute for Climate and Society

Lisa Goddard, IRI’s new director. Photo by Brian Kahn/IRI

Lisa Goddard, a leading expert on climate change and El Niño’s influence on climate has been appointed director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, part of Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

The IRI is devoted to studying climate prediction and helping vulnerable societies anticipate, prevent and manage climate-related events such as droughts, floods and heat waves.

“I look forward to working with Dr. Goddard as she leads this unique and important organization,” says Steven Cohen, executive director of the Earth Institute. ”Since its founding, the IRI has worked to develop and utilize the highest quality climate science and data to address the real-world problems of sustainable development. Lisa Goddard brings the experience, expertise and energy needed to provide visionary leadership to the IRI,” he says.

Goddard says her goal for the institute is to capitalize on its existing talent and go after new funding opportunities. ”In this way, we can continue to exert a powerful influence for change in the developing world as well as in the scientific community, she says.

“I believe strongly in the mission of the IRI – in connecting science on climate variability and change to better decision-making and improved livelihoods for people throughout the world. The focus and approach of our work gives us a unique perspective that couldn’t be achieved through more traditional academic pathways.”

Researchers at the institute work on projects across the globe and are funded by U.S. government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as other national governments, including Uruguay and India. The IRI collaborates with major international organizations such as the World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Goddard, 45, joined the IRI as a postdoctoral research fellow in 1995, when the institute was in its pilot phase. She worked on seasonal prediction and its application in regions around the world. In 2003, Goddard was promoted to research scientist, and earlier this year, was tapped to lead the IRI’s Climate Program, overseeing nine researchers and support staff. She also developed and currently oversees the Post-docs Applying Climate Expertise Program (PACE), a national program that links recent climate Ph.D. recipients with decision-making institutions.

Goddard sits on five scientific advisory panels, including the National Academies of Science’s prestigious Board of Atmospheric Sciences Committee, and serves as chair of U.S. CLIVAR, a national research program that studies the variability and predictability of the global climate system.

“Lisa is on a very short list of people one thinks of when considering the intersection of climate science and societal needs,” says Jim Hurrell, who is the director of the Earth System Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and has worked with Goddard for more than a decade. He is also the co-chair of the International CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group, of which Goddard is a member.

“She has the rare ability to really understand what decision makers need and how to convey the information we have, including the uncertainties, so that they can make the best use of the climate science and predictions that our field produces – a very rare talent,” Hurrell says.

Goddard’s research is focused on improving the quality and content of climate prediction. “When I first came to IRI, seasonal climate prediction was a fairly new concept, but it was clear there were big possibilities to improve the information being supplied to communities at risk of climate variability, especially in the developing world,” she recalls. “People needed and wanted better information, and this has continued to this day.”

She plans to continue her research that focuses on predicting the climate 10 to 20 years in the future, a relatively new field known as near–term climate prediction, or decadal variability. Prediction at this time scale is in high demand for development projects. For example, a country thinking of building a dam to meet future water and energy demands, or expanding farm production to feed a growing population should understand how the climate might change in a decade or two. Seasonal forecasts and long term climate projections such as those provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are useful, but inadequate in these cases.

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Lisa over many years at IRI,” says previous director Stephen Zebiak, who is now leading a program hosted at IRI to improve the provision and development of climate services around the world. “She brings outstanding credentials, great dedication and energy to her role as director, and these will serve the institute very well.”

Goddard earned her Ph.D. from Princeton in 1995. She is also an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

For more information, please contact Francesco Fiondella, francesco@iri.columbia.edu, 646.321.2271.

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Farmers in Senegal Use Forecasts to Combat Climate Risks

Category> Agriculture-Food, Climate, Poverty / Economic Development   Tags> Africa, agriculture, Climate, climate matters, farming, forecasts, IRI, sahel, Senegal, training

Climate in Africa’s Sahel region varies dramatically from one year to the next and often threatens farmers’ livelihoods. In Kaffrine, Senegal, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, the Senegalese National Meteorological Agency, the country’s agriculture extension service, the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society and many farmers groups, are working to equip farmers with the information needed to better manage droughts and other climate risks.

The partners have held training workshops to teach farmers about the probabilistic nature of seasonal climate forecasts, and in turn, the researchers have learned about the farmers’ traditional climate knowledge and management responses. By engaging with farmers in this way, the researchers now have a better understanding of community needs and have built common ground between scientific forecasting and traditional knowledge. The farmers emerged from the trainings with an increased level of trust in seasonal forecasting, which has opened doors to improved agricultural management options.

A new video illustrates this participatory approach to making climate information accessible to farmers:

To learn more about the work, head over to the CCAFS blog:

http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/providing-climate-services-make-sense-farmers

http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/senegal-farmers-use-forecasts-combat-climate-risks

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Food Security in the Face of Changing Climate

Then Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 900 million people in the world were chronically hungry between 2010 and 2012. The organization is also warning we could face a global food crisis in 2013 because of historically low grain reserves and rising food prices.

Add to this the ever-present challenge of trying to increase both production of and access to food on a planet with increasingly more people on it and whose climate is changing, and you have raison d’être of the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security research program (CCAFS).

The program is run by the CGIAR, a network of 15 international agricultural research institutes and a driving force behind major advances in food security and poverty reductions in Asia and Latin America in the latter third of the twentieth century. Think Green Revolution.

CCAFS is the world’s largest research program focused specifically on climate change and food security. It works across the developing world, but currently emphasizes sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

James Hansen, an agricultural scientist at the Earth Institute’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, also happens to be one of the key research leaders within CCAFS. Below, he discusses his role and the issues that most interest him in the Q&A and video below.

What is your role within CCAFS?
The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security is organized around four themes: Adaptation Through Progressive Climate Change, Pro-Poor Climate Change Mitigation, Integration for Decision Making and the theme that I lead, which is called Adaptation through Managing Climate Risk.

What is the focus of your theme?
We try to enable promising innovations for managing climate-related agricultural risk at local and regional levels. We also support improvements to climate-related information products and services that enable a range of agricultural risk management interventions. The theme targets the many short term, climate-sensitive decisions that farmers, humanitarian response organizations and others have to make on a routine basis and that can influence their long term vulnerability to climate.

You’ve also been a research scientist at IRI for 12 years. Did the work you were doing here evolve naturally into the mission and goals of CCAFS?
We recognized for a long time that the best way for IRI to have an impact on food security and rural livelihoods was to partner with the CGIAR, which has enormous reach and influence on these matters. At the IRI, we believe any approach to adapting agriculture to climate change must address the system’s vulnerability to current climate variability–events such as droughts, floods and extreme weather events. We were successful in convincing the agricultural research community to accept that argument, and ultimately the CCAFS program was formulated to take into account both longer term climate change and these shorter term fluctuations in climate.

What do see as being the key challenges to tackle?
If we’re going to adapt agriculture to a changing climate–no matter the time scale–people will need to have access to relevant and timely climate information. Right now, this is a significant constraint. Within the theme I lead, I see a particular opportunity to connect global efforts to strengthen climate services with the agricultural research community in a way that will give farmers and other agricultural decision makers a voice in the design and evaluation of the information that they receive. It can’t just be handed down from the climate or meteorological communities. Feedback from end users is critically important.

We’re also working to strengthen connections to the humanitarian community that deals with food crises. Typically, when the impact of an extreme event, such as a drought or flood, on food production reaches a certain threshold, a set of institutions and interventions is mobilized. Too often, these humanitarian interventions are disconnected with mainstream agricultural planning.

Can you give an example of this disconnect?
In Ethiopia, ten times as much overseas development assistance is devoted to responding to food crises as is invested in the long-term development to reduce vulnerability to those food crises. I believe this cycle of increasing vulnerability and dependency on emergency relief can be overcome through a combination of better management of climate related risk by rural communities, better coordination between agricultural development and food security response, and earlier intervention when climate information indicates a likely shortfall in agricultural production.

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