Climate affects almost all human endeavors. Its inherent variability,
including extreme meteorological events (such as floods, droughts, and
hurricanes), also affects the terrestrial and biological systems on which
society depends for survival. Public awareness of and concern with climate
impacts places demands on the meteorological profession to provide pertinent
climatic information to a diverse user group in a timely and effective manner.
The applied climatologist often combines a broad background in the social
sciences with detailed knowledge of the physical sciences, theory from the
research community, and model-generated and monitored environmental data to
answer specific client questions. The objective of the Committee on Applied
Climatology is to further the application of state-of-the-art knowledge,
information, and technology to real-world socioeconomic and environmental
problems.
Committee concerns include, but are not restricted to, the following:
- development of methods and techniques that identify and describe climatic
patterns and relationships, including such traditional descriptors of climate as
normals;
- assessment of societal and biological climate impacts and the historical
changes in this impact because of past climate variations;
- availability of climate information that enhances understanding of the
impact of climate on managed and unmanaged systems;
- oversight of observational and measurement techniques to maintain the
integrity and representativeness of short- and long-term databases to permit an
accurate and unbiased evaluation of climate change;
- increased availability of data, particularly on local and regional scales;
- development of climatic models for tailored applications to human endeavors
from micro- to macrospatial scales and from immediate to long-term temporal
scales; and
- development of improved linkages between applied climatologists and users
of climate data products to facilitate the application of climatic information
in decision making.
The committee recognizes the broad variety of scientific disciplines
concerned with applied climatology and encourages stronger interactions of
climatologists with other scientists and climate data users through national and
international conferences. Many of these conferences should be planned jointly
with other American Meteorological Society (AMS) committees on related
disciplines, such as the Committees on Probability and Statistics, Climate
Variations, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, and Biometeorology and
Aerobiology, as well as the Program Committee on Global Change Studies.
The committee also recognizes its responsibility to provide advice on the
capabilities and needs of the applied climatologist to other AMS committees
concerned with technique and method development; analysis, diagnosis, and
prediction of climatic variations; and climatic impact assessment. |