Understanding Climate Variability: A Pre-requisite for Predictions and Climate Change Detection

Abstract

It is interesting to note that the person who has worked over the last five years to strengthen and — if needed — to initiate the joint action of the four major Global Change Research Programmes was asked to speak at the conference on “The Disciplinary Way”. Maybe because without a high profile in disciplinary research all interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research loses its basis and becomes wishful thinking. The content of this contribution is partly a review of the achievements of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the oldest and really globally co-ordinated environmental research programme that attracts the full scientific community. Based on a fore-runner, called Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP), and the infrastructure of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of about 185 members of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and jointly sponsored since 1980 by WMO and the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU, now renamed to International Council for Science), WCRP made major steps forward to reach its major goal: To understand and to predict — as far as possible — climate variability and climate change including human influences.