Climate Diagnostics Center
Advancing understanding and prediction of climate variability
Mission
The mission of the Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC) is to advance national capabilities in interpreting the causes of observed climate variations, and to apply this knowledge to improve climate models and forecasts plus develop new climate products that better serve the needs of decision-makers and the public.
CDC develops national capabilities to analyze, interpret, and forecast important climate variations on time scales ranging from a few weeks to centuries. Short-term climate variations of interest include major droughts and floods over the continental U.S. and the global anomalies associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). These events attract great public interest and often have enormous social and economic consequences. On longer time scales, basic research goals include identifying the causes of decadal to centennial climate variations and separating natural variability from human-induced climate changes to provide an improved scientific basis for planning and decision-making. CDC also performs extensive intercomparisons of observational and climate model data, an activity vital to improving current research and prediction models.
Specific goals within CDC include:
- Identifying key processes that contribute to extreme, short-term climate events, such as major droughts and floods.
- Improving understanding and predictions of important climate phenomena such as ENSO and their links to high-impact weather events.
- Improving monitoring and analyses of climate variability through surface and satellite observations and the incorporation of such observations into climate models.
- Identifying major patterns of climate variability on decadal and longer time scales, including natural variations and human-induced changes.
- Developing new climate information to benefit society and mitigate potential adverse impacts, such as the impacts of climate variability on water resources in the interior western United States.
Scientific approaches
Scientists at CDC employ a broad array of methods to achieve these goals, including observational diagnostic analyses, simple modeling studies, and analyses of forecast experiments obtained from sophisticated models. CDC studies increasingly involve comparisons of observational and model data, an activity essential for improving current research and prediction models. This is one example of the more general and fundamental role that diagnostic studies play in linking together various disciplines, including observations and monitoring, theoretical research, modeling, predictions, and, ultimately, applications.
This program complements research done by CU's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences [ About ATOC ] and CIRES' National Snow and Ice Data Center [ About NSIDC ] . It also contributes to CIRES' Climate Systems Variability and Regional Processes scientific research themes.
