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Making Climate Forecasts Matter (1999)

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Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
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About the Authors

WILLIAM EASTERLING (Chair) is a member of the Department of Geography and the Earth System Science Center at the Pennsylvania State University. Formally trained as a geographer, he has published widely on issues of seasonal-to-interannual climate variability, climate change impacts on agriculture, leading climate indicators of ecological and social impact, and land use change interactions with the carbon cycle. His current research focuses on underlying theoretical explanation of cross-scale determinants of land use change. He is the former acting director of the National Institute for Global Environmental Change and currently is the convening lead author for the chapter on Agriculture and Food Security in the upcoming Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has also held positions in agricultural meteorology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and in the Climate Resources Program at Resources for the Future, Inc. He has B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

PAUL R. EPSTEIN is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and is a member of the HSPH Working Group on Emerging Diseases. Previously, he worked in medical teaching and research capacities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has coordinated and coedited an eight-part series on Health and Climate Change for The Lancet and is a principal core author for Human Health and Climate Change, a publication produced by a panel on health impacts of climate change supported by the World Health Organization, the World

Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
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Page 161

Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Environmental Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He currently is coordinating an integrated assessment of disease events along the East Coast of North America, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. He is a member of the Health of the Oceans module of the Global Ocean Observing System. He has a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and an M.P.H. in tropical public health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

KATHLEEN GALVIN is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and senior research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. Trained as a biological anthropologist, she has published on issues of African pastoral adaptation, health, nutrition, and strategies of coping with climate variability. Her current research explores the effects of climate variability on land use in southern Africa and in the U.S. Great Plains. She is also investigating strategies for balancing pastoral food security, biological conservation, and ecosystem integrity in East Africa with use of an integrated modeling and assessment system. She was a member of a National Research Council group that assessed research needs and modes of support for the human dimensions of global change. She has B.A. and M.A. degrees from Colorado State University and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York, Binghamton.

DIANA LIVERMAN is currently director of the Latin American Studies Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she is also associated with the Department of Geography, the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, and the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. Trained as a geographer, she has published widely on drought, climate impacts, resource management, and environmental policy. Her current research examines the social causes and consequences of global and regional environmental change, especially the impacts of climate change and variability on water resources and agriculture in the Americas and the social causes of land use and cover change in Mexico. She previously served as chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change and is the cochair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter American Institute for Global Change. She has a B.A. from the University of London, an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, all in geography.

DENNIS S. MILETI is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Informa-

Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
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tion Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is author of over 100 publications and most of these focus on societal aspects of emergency preparedness and natural and technological hazards mitigation. He has served as chairman of the Committee on Natural Disasters in the National Research Council, as a member of the Advisory Board on Research to the U.S. Geological Survey, and as the chair of the Board of Visitors to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Emergency Management Institute. He has a variety of practical experiences related to hazards mitigation and preparedness, including serving as a consultant to develop emergency response plans for nuclear power plants, and he has been a staff member of the California Seismic Safety Commission. He has a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. from California State University, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

KATHLEEN MILLER is currently the interim head of the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where she has worked since 1985. She conducts research on the socioeconomic impacts of climate variability and climate change, focusing particularly on impacts as mediated through human management of natural resource systems. Her published work includes papers on water resources, fisheries, agriculture, and energy demand. Her current work deals with assessment of climate impacts in North America and climatic aspects of natural resource management. In recent work, she has examined the effects of climatic variations on the international management of Pacific salmon resources, the potential impacts of climate variability and climate change on water resources in the western United States, and the possible impacts of climate change on U.S.-Canadian transboundary water management. She has a B.A. in anthropology and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Washington.

FRANKLIN W. NUTTER is the president of the Reinsurance Association of America in Washington, D.C. The association has been instrumental in advocating an appropriate private-public arrangement in financing and mitigating natural catastrophe losses. He also served as the president of the Alliance of American Insurers and chair of the Natural Disaster Coalition, an effort to address how the United States pays natural disaster-related costs. He has a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

MARK R. ROSENZWEIG is professor of economics and chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly on the faculties of the University of Minnesota and Yale University and served as director of research for the U.S. Select Commission on

Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
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Immigration and Refugee Policy in 1979-1980 and co-director of the Economic Development Center at the University of Minnesota from 1982 to 1990. He has a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. He has published numerous articles on human capital and population in both the United States and in low-income countries, with particular attention to the interaction between households and the environment in rural areas. A fellow of the Econometric Society, he is the coeditor of the Handbook on Population and Family Economics and serves as editor or on the editorial board of a number of scholarly journals. He was a member of the National Research Council's Panel on Immigration Statistics in 1983-1985 and is a member of the Council's Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change.

EDWARD SARACHIK is professor of atmospheric sciences and adjunct professor of oceanography at the University of Washington. His major interests are the mechanisms and predictability of short-term climate variations, especially the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, and the mechanisms and predictability of longer-term variability of the earth's climate, especially the ocean's role in such variability. He has served as chair of the National Research Council's Advisory Panel for the TOGA Program and as a member of its Climate Research Committee, Panel for Decadal to Centennial Climate Variability, and Committee on Global Change Research. He also serves on the International CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group of the World Climate Research Programme. He has a B.S. from Queens College of the City University of New York and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Brandeis University.

PAUL C. STERN is study director of the Panel on Human Dimensions of Seasonal-to-Interannual Climate Variability and its parent Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change at the National Research Council; research professor of sociology at George Mason University; and president of the Social and Environmental Research Institute. In his major research area, the human dimensions of environmental problems, he has written numerous scholarly articles, coedited Energy Use: The Human Dimension and Global Environmental Change: Understanding the Human Dimensions, and coauthored the textbook Environmental Problems and Human Behavior. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has also authored a textbook on social science research methods and coedited several books on international conflict issues. He has a B.A. from Amherst College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from Clark University.

Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
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Page 164

ELKE WEBER is a professor of psychology and of management and human resources at the Ohio State University. Her work is at the intersection of psychology and economics and examines the influence of individual and cultural differences in perceptions and values on decision making. To this end, she uses an eclectic set of research methods that range from the experimentally informed axiomatic modeling of risk and risky choice to field studies. She has a Ph.D. from Harvard University, has taught in both psychology departments (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and business schools (University of Chicago; Otto Beisheim School of Corporate Management, Germany), and spent a year at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She is currently the president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and associate editor for the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. In addition, she serves on three other journal editorial boards, on the executive councils of the Decision Analysis Society and the Society for Mathematical Psychology, and on a MacArthur Foundation panel.

Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
×
Page 160
Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
×
Page 161
Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
×
Page 162
Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
×
Page 163
Suggested Citation:"About the Authors." National Research Council. 1999. Making Climate Forecasts Matter. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6370.
×
Page 164
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Making Climate Forecasts Matter Get This Book
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El Nino has been with us for centuries, but now we can forcast it, and thus can prepare far in advance for the extreme climatic events it brings. The emerging ability to forecast climate may be of tremendous value to humanity if we learn how to use the information well.

How does society cope with seasonal-to-interannual climatic variations? How have climate forecasts been used—and how useful have they been? What kinds of forecast information are needed? Who is likely to benefit from forecasting skill? What are the benefits of better forecasting?

This book reviews what we know about these and other questions and identifies research directions toward more useful seasonal-to-interannual climate forecasts. In approaching their recommendations, the panel explores:

  • Vulnerability of human activities to climate.
  • State of the science of climate forecasting.
  • How societies coevolved with their climates and cope with variations in climate.
  • How climate information should be disseminated to achieve the best response.
  • How we can use forecasting to better manage the human consequences of climate change.
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