CDC Mission and Goals
The mission of the Climate Diagnostics Center (CDC) is to advance national capabilities to interpret the causes of observed climate variations, and to apply this knowledge to improve climate models and forecasts and develop new climate products that better serve the needs of the public and decision-makers.
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 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.
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Specific goals of major subprojects 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 effects of climate variability on water resources in the interior western United States.
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 of the atmosphere and oceans. 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.
