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11 November 2005

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Now available in PDF format: Abstract Book [7.4 Mb] (posted 10 November 2005)

Introduction

The following pages contain abstracts for presentations given during U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) Workshop on Climate Science in Support of Decision Making, held November 14-16, 2005, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. These abstracts represent the collected work of hundreds of climate researchers; experts in related technical fields; managers of resources affected by climate variability and change; regional, state, and local government officials; policy analysts; and other stakeholders.

The workshop was designed to serve as a forum to address progress and future plans for CCSP's three decision-support approaches: 1) prepare scientific syntheses and assessments on key climate science issues; 2) develop and illustrate adaptive management and planning capabilities; and 3) develop and evaluate information and methods to support climate change policymaking. The workshop examined the "state-of-the-art" in each of these three approaches through dialogues between producers of scientific information on climate variability and change and those who could use this information in decision making.

On July 1, 2005, a call went out for presentations that explore the application of information developed through science and technology research on climate variability and change to support decision making in the following five broad areas:

• Water, including drought, water supply and water quality, and the uses of water in agriculture, ecosystems, recreation, and other sectors;
• Ecosystems, including carbon sequestration, fire and other disturbances, invasive species, managed ecosystems (e.g., agriculture, forestry), and public health;
• Coastal Issues, including sea-level rise, infrastructure, storms, and marine resources;
• Energy, including climate information that supports energy management and seasonal forecasting, infrastructure, energy planning such as biomass and renewables; and
• Air Quality, including human health effects such as air quality and temperature issues.

Presentations were to address one or more of the following topics: the type of information that decision makers and other stakeholders need to inform decision making; evaluation of the current state of observations, modeling, or other research and its appropriateness for use in decision making at different scales; example applications of scientific information to support decision making; participant experiences; methods for communicating scientific information, including incorporation of information about levels of confidence and uncertainty in decision making; methods and metrics for evaluating outcomes; and opportunities for improved application of currently-available information and priorities for future CCSP research.

We received a great number of outstanding abstracts and gave careful consideration to each of them. Committees of agency scientists and program managers working in the five broad areas addressed in our call for presentations reviewed the abstracts and recommended which to accept primarily on the basis of relevance to CCSP and workshop objectives. Because so many strong abstracts were submitted, the Workshop Steering Committee scheduled a special evening poster session in which many of those abstracts not accepted as presentations could be discussed informally by workshop participants and additional guests. Of the nearly 300 abstracts received, more than 200 were accepted by the Workshop Steering Committee as either speaker or poster presentations.

Presenters were given an opportunity to submit revised abstracts for inclusion into this abstract book. Other than copyediting and formatting changes, these abstracts appear as they were received. The views expressed in these abstracts, and in the presentations they represent, are not those of the CCSP, its member agencies, or the U.S. Government.