Aspen Global Change Institute

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View materials from the most recent Aspen Global Change Institute meetings:
2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, 1994

Or go to AGCI's Past Participant List
25-29 June 2007: Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate
  • Session organizers: Tom Karl, Gerald Meehl, Bill Murray and Chris Miller
  • Agency leads: Tom Karl, Chris Miller, Anjuli Bamzai, Don Anderson, Tsengdar Lee and Tom Armstrong
  • This session marks the third in a series on the critical topic of climate extremes. The goal of the 2007 meeting was to develop and summarize the scientific understanding of weather and climate extremes for the United States Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The meeting sought to fulfill the CCSP extremes climate component Goal 3: “to reduce uncertainty in projections of how the Earth’s climate and related systems may change in the future.”
  • Scientists discussed the most recent findings on extremes, including new modeling techniques and data from recent studies (such as studies on the frequency and intensity of hurricanes).
  • Output included a draft CCSP report on key research issues.
 hurricane Katrina
12-17 August 2007: Northern Eurasia Land Surface Properties and Change and Its Role in the Global Earth System
  • Workshop Conveners: Guy Brasseur, Kathy Hibbard, Vladimir Romanovsky, Irina Sokolik, and Pavel Groisman

  • Background: Northern Eurasia is undergoing rapid and significant changes associated with changing climate and socio-economic patterns from the 20th century to present. Climatic changes over the largest landmass in the northern extratropics interact and affect the rate of the global change through atmospheric circulation and through strong biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. How these feedbacks impact the greater global system is largely unknown. Studies of environmental processes in this region are, therefore, an important contribution to reducing uncertainties in our understanding of global change beyond the domain of Northern Eurasia.

  • About the Workshop: This Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) workshop tackled how to incorporate regional biophysical feedbacks associated with terrestria in the northern high latitudes, a key issue for emerging earth system models. Disucssions included:
      1. changes in permafrost and their interaction with terrestrial carbon (methane and CO2 emissions);
      2. potentially dramatic land cover changes that may affect regional and global energy, water, and biogeochemical cycles, including atmospheric aerosol loading;
      3. strong climatic changes affecting and being affected by all the above and how to represent them in climate and Earth system models; and
      4. social processes that intertwine and feed back to environmental changes in the region and beyond.

  • Intended output of the Workshop is a set of recommendations and an Implementation Plan for integration of NEESPI studies with the global Earth system modeling Community.
 NEEPSI Biomes
30 July- 5 August 2006: Earth Systems Modeling: The Next Generation
  • Co-chaired by Jerry Meehl and Kathy Hibbard from the National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • Meeting sponsored by NASA and agencies of the USGCRP
  • The meeting addressed the the form that the next generation of earth system models will take, with particular application for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).
  • Participants at the meeting represented the scientific communities that are going beyond the traditional global coupled model components of atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice, and including carbon cycle, dynamical vegetation, aerosols, and chemistry.
13-19 August 2006: Exploring the Boundaries of Nature: A Reflective Dialogue on the Environment
  • Workshop Organizers: Jeffrey Kiehl, Stephen Bennett, Galin McGowan, Stephen Foster, Susi Moser, and Donald Williams
  • Meeting sponsored by NASA and agencies of the USGCRP
  • The purpose of the workshop was to bring together experts from a diverse range of communities to consider new ways of exploring our relationship to the environment.
  • In this workshop we did not assess the science of global environmental change, but worked to understand and explore impediments to reaching a consensus view among five communities, often functioning in separation: science, business, government, media, and education.
8-11 May 2005: University of Colorado Carbon, Climate, and Society Initiative IGERT graduate program retreat
  • Approximately 25 graduate students and faculty from the University of Colorado Carbon, Climate, and Society Initiative (CCSI) will convene in Aspen for a three day retreat and evaluation of the IGERT program. AGCI will assist in the evaluation of the program.
  • Program Directors are Drs. Jim White and Alan Townsend
  • CCSI is a subset of INSTARR (The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research)
  • IGERT stands for Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship and it is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation.
National Science Foundation and University of Colorado logos
9-15 July 2005: Abrupt Climate Change: Mechanisms, Early Warning Signs, Impacts, and Economic Analyses
  • Co-chaired by Drs. Klaus Keller, Michael Schlesinger, and Gary Yohe.
  • Meeting is sponsored by NASA and agencies of the USGCRP
  • The weeklong workshop will bring together a group of experts on (i) the mechanisms of abrupt climate changes, (ii) detection of early warning signs, (iii) impacts of abrupt climate changes, and (iv) economic analysis of climate policies under climate thresholds with particular emphasis on near-term mitigation and the value of information.
thermohaline circulation
15-21 July 2005: North American Weather and Climate Extremes: Progress in Monitoring and Research
  • Co-chaired by Drs. Tom Karl and Jerry Meehl
  • Meeting is sponsored by NASA and agencies of the USGCRP
  • The primary objective of the workshop is to assess the latest scientific findings related to monitoring and projections of extremes and to see collectively where we are in our efforts to deal with research and monitoring of climate extremes for the North American continent.

Four general areas were addressed:

  1. Develop a framework to define climate extremes of particular ecological or economic impact.
  2. Assess the state of the science in the historical and contemporary measurement of climate extremes.
  3. Examine and clarify the ability of climate models to simulate and project climate extremes including changes on the frequency, intensity, and duration of extremes.
  4. Define the measurements, analyses, and other actions required to reduce uncertainties about changes and trends in future climate extremes.
Hurricane Andrew
21-24 July 2005: Biodiversity in a Changing Climate: Assessing Uncertainties

There are three related goals of the workshop:

  1. Provide a qualitative, if not quantitative, assessment of current uncertainties in biodiversity impact projections. Anticipated product is a scientific paper at a level appropriate for use in the IPCC Fourth Assessment
  2. Using the above uncertainty assessment, provide guidelines for conservation planners as to the most appropriate use of projections of biodiversity impacts from different sources. Anticipated product is an IUCN distributed report.
  3. Provide guidelines for adopting existing methodologies or new research that would aid in reducing uncertainties in impact projections.
Edith's Checkerspot butterfly
Learn more about Camille Parmesan
11-17 July 2004: Aerosols and the Hydrological Cycle
  • Co-chaired by Dr. William Collins (National Center for Atmospheric Research) and Dr. V. Ramanathan (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD)
  • Sponsored by NASA, NOAA, and NSF
  • This weeklong workshop is designed to help stimulate new national and international research to understand the links between aerosols in the atmosphere and the hydrological cycle.

 clouds
11-14 March 2004: Climate Scenarios and Projections: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable as Applied to California
  • Co-chaired by Dr. Stephen Schneider (Professor of Biology, Stanford University) and Dr. Richard Moss (Director, U.S. Climate Change Research Program Office)
  • Co-Sponsored by the the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research Program
  • This three day workshop utilized California as a regional case study to categorize and visualize scientific uncertainties and assess the state of the art emission and climate models with an emphasis on the regional scale.

 Golden Gate Bridge
6-11 July 2003: Energy Options and Paths to Climate Stabilization
Dr. Richard Smalley
5-10 June 2003: Learning from Regions: A Comparative Appraisal of Climate, Water, and Human Interactions in the Colorado and Columbia River Systems
Canyonlands
18 - 23 October 2001: Forest Management and Global Change: Near-Term Decisions and Long-Term Outcomes
10 - 19 August 2000: Atmospheric Composition, Biogeochemical Cycles, and Climate Change
22 - 28 July 2000: Industrial Carbon Management: Crosscutting Scientific, Technical, and Policy Implications
13 - 22 August 1999: Ecological Consequences of Climatic Extremes and Variability
13 - 22 July 1999: Integrating Human and Natural Systems to Understand Climate Change Impacts on Cities