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20 June 2006

Workshop Home

Final Report

List of Participants.

Abstracts.  Includes links to most posters and to many presentations

Posters

Presentations

Agenda.  Includes links to most presentations

Newsroom

Background

Program and Events

Biographical Information

Sponsors

General Information

Please see Appendix I for a Glossary of Acronyms Used in this document.

Workshop Report:
Introduction

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) held a workshop on November 14-16, 2005, in Arlington, Virginia, addressing the capability of climate science to inform decision making. The workshop served as a forum to address the Program’s progress and future plans regarding its three decision support approaches:

• Prepare scientific syntheses and assessments on key climate science issues.
• Develop and illustrate adaptive management and planning capabilities.
• Develop and evaluate methods to support climate change policymaking.

The workshop included discussion of decision-maker needs for scientific information on climate variability and change, as well as expected outcomes of CCSP’s research and assessment activities that are necessary for sound resource management, adaptive planning, and policy formulation.

Approximately 700 individuals from the U.S. and abroad attended the workshop, including representation from academia; governments at the state, local and national levels; non-governmental organizations (NGO); decision makers, including resource managers and policy developers; Congress; and the private sector.   Their interests ranged from exchanging ideas on climate research, observations, and information tools useful for climate-related decision making to providing input to the evolution of the Program’s activities.  A list of participants can be found online.  See Appendix II for selected participant demographics.

A Call for Presentations resulted in over 260 abstract submissions.  Abstracts can be viewed online. Approximately 40 abstracts were chosen for oral presentations based on the workshop themes and objectives, and approximately 170 were presented in a poster session on the first evening of the workshop.  The poster session was well attended, and received positive feedback from attendees, both those viewing and those presenting.  Most posters can be found online along with speakers’ presentations.

A workshop agenda also can be found on the CCSP website. Other information from the workshop can be found online. Rapporteurs took notes in each of the workshop sessions, and their notes were used in compiling this report.  It is intended that the workshop discussions and this report will be valuable resources to guide future program activities in decision support.  This report attempts to capture the nature of the discussions at the workshop and does not necessarily represent the Program’s position.

After the workshop, several participants responded to an evaluation request.  They provided positive feedback on the opportunity to learn about CCSP's activities and exchange information with other scientists and decision makers.  CCSP will use insights from the workshop, including those described in the post-workshop evaluation, to guide current and future CCSP activities. An overview of the post-workshop evaluation responses is provided in Appendix III.

If you would like to provide additional comments, or if you have any questions about CCSP decision support resources development, please contact us at decision_support@climatescience.gov.