There is a pressing and increasing need for highly qualified personnel in all fields of climate science to work in industry, government and public agencies. As the impacts arising from climate change continue to become more apparent, there is increasing demand for skilled personel who
- understand the complexity of climate change and the influence of multiple interactive feedbacks
- can draw upon knowledge coming from many different stakeholder groups
- will apply their collective knowledge to the challenges of adaptation.
The Program in Interdisciplinary Climate Science is a collaborative partnership between
- The University of Victoria
- The Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis , and
- The Department of Fisheries and Oceans
providing training to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in these key areas.
Specialised training will be provided to small cohorts of graduate students through the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, drawn from both a core set of climate science courses and a broad range of optional courses intended to establish links outside the physical sciences. Students and post-doctoral researchers will work collaboratively with university and government researchers on projects of strategic importance. These research projects involve areas criticial to industry, government, and society:
Understanding the Climate
What will be the magnitude and regional variation of climate change?
Understanding the Implications
What are the likely physical, economic, social and ecological consequences of this change and what opportunities and challenges will it create?
Developing Solutions
What policy and technology instruments can be developed and used to respond to climate change so that government, industry and society will benefit?
Communicating the Issues
How can the facts, impacts of and solutions to climate change be communicated in an effective way to government, industry and the general public?
These questions will be addressed in the context of three research themes: downscaling and probabilitic forecasting; coastal ocean and terrestrial ecosystems; and projection, detection, and attribution of climate change.
