Labs and technical units

Lab of education and community outreach

The lab of education and community outreach will be a link between the institution and society regarding the management of climate knowledge and information along four main axes of development:

• Promotion of climate topics in university programs: second and third degree courses and masters in climatology and related areas. At present these topics are completely absent in Spanish universities
• Development of educational activities and basic school and high school levels.
• Management of climate information requests from the public and the media.
• Education on the highly specific topic of the human dimensions of climate variability and change. This lab will focus on adaptation and training of uniquely qualified professionals to facilitate intelligent adaptation. This topic will have a strong interdisciplinary link to other centers and researchers in other disciplines to facilitate and deepen outreach to society and stakeholders.

IC³ will stimulate exchange of research and education and the generation of new ideas through a variety of mechanisms. The main one will be the Programme in Climate Sciences and Applications (PCSA) in conjunction with universities. IC³ should reach a reputation of excellence in theoretical research on the climate system and through modeling of global-scale and regional climate dynamics (and change). In ten years, IC³ program in PCSA should be able to offer a blend of expertise in theoretical, computational, and observational studies of the global climate and its impacts, comparable to the best (educational) programs ‘operating’ worldwide and of first reference in Europe. The aim of IC³ is to establish a new graduate program to train professionals and academics to “understand and cope with the impact of climate variability and change on society and the environment.” The master and PhD programs of the center must be comprehensive in basic and applied areas. PCSA is designed to produce Ph.D. graduates who will take leading roles in climate research and master and graduates capable to take the role needed for the adaptation activities to climate change vital for societal development in the foreseeable future. The academic programs must be designed in compliance with the spirit of the “Joint Declarations of the European Ministers of Education on The European Higher Education Area”, La Sorbonne 1998, and Bolonia 1999, and must be able to attract an important share of the best European students. Other mechanisms to promote educational activities will be the organizations of internal IC³ seminars, Sponsored Seminars, Presentations and also of research Events. Also a fully interactive website with proactive resources will be launched at the IC³ domain, created and maintained by IC³ Web Services and IC³ Administration, with established web links with internal and external partners. IC³ will also produce Promotional Material of its research and applications seeking Community Outreach and also Educational Resources, and a Database access service. The Educational Resources Center and a Visitors center will be opened to the public during business hours and will include an “Sphere” (sos.noaa.gov), a spherical video projection system of climate research animations. Finally a Fellowship/Internships Program will be launched to support research and technical activities conducted at the center. Examples of these programs might be:
Undergraduate Summer Internships: Each summer, IC³ with the support of funding institutions sponsors a number of undergraduate students to participate in a number of summer internship programs, in accordance with the universities.
Summer High School Internships: Summer high school internships will be made available for high school students to introduce them to science careers, with a focus on climate sciences. The proposed effort will support the participation of two additional summer high school students in this program.

Applications research lab

The applications research lab will explore the possible practical application of the knowledge arising from the IC³ research activities. The work at IC³ intends to be of direct societal benefit in that it ultimately leads to a better understanding of the causes and mechanisms of changes in global and regional climate, covering also the recent climate extremes in areas such as the Mediterranean area. IC³ will seek to advance climate modeling through model-observation comparisons. Climate change issues have attracted significant attention amongst the wider scientific community, management and the public. The work at IC³ is also of relevance in that increased understanding of regimes of atmosphere-ocean variability will lead to a better idea of how anthropogenic forcing will impact global and regional climate. IC³ will seek to elucidate connections between large-scale and low-frequency modes of climatic variability and regional weather and climate extremes (heatwaves, drought, flood, fire risk, etc..) to use these connections for predicting extreme climate behavior over the focus region (e.g. the Mediterranean and other climatic hot-spots), months to decades into the future. IC³ will contribute also towards the emerging understanding of climate predictability and its limiting factors: another issue of significant public interest. Elucidating also the probabilistic nature of such projections to users will be a key aspect: for policy and decision makers, water managers, health professionals, the energy sector, farmers, wildfire managers, wine and ski industries, etc. IC³ will participate and whenever possible, lead, national and international climate change assessments (like IPCC) that serve to the benefit of society and the global environment. Predictability and climate societal impacts are particularly important in areas such as water resources, agriculture and health, to cite only a few. Introducing young scientists to IC³ related science and research priorities will be an important issue, with graduates of the AOSSA Program forming a group of uniquely qualified public and private sector professionals and researchers. The different perspectives covered will be of interest to energy policy, energy demand, health (infectious diseases warning and mitigation), famine, drought, and flood early warning and mitigation, water resources management, environmental journalism, communication of climate variability and climate-related risks, and environmental secondary education.

Atmosphere and oceans research lab

The atmosphere and oceans research laboratory (LAO) is the technological unit that will manage all the processes related with sampling and the generation of field data. The LAO will manage all the atmospheric and oceanic sampling sites and devices of IC³, will take care of the storage rooms, the labs for processing samples, the different analytical labs and the calibration and intercallibration of all the equipments and procedures.

Computing facilities and management lab

The computing facilities and management lab will take care of four very important aspects of IC³: a) the development of the technical aspects of the web page and public access databases, b) the development and management of the internal computer network, c) the IT (information technologies) assistance to all IC³ members to solve all the software and hardware problems they will experience, and finally d) to implement and manage the IC³ supercomputing system and the access to external supercomputing infrastructures. The IC³ supercomputing system will have a computing power of around 2 teraflops and will include all the necessary storage devices.

Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies and Assessment Lab

This unit will interact with policymakers and stakeholders in order to translate into the management language tha implications of the scientific knowledge adquired in IC³. This unit will also provide help and advice to public and private government bodieswith respect to mitigation and adaptation isssues.