World Climate Research Programme

Allgemeine Informationen

The two overarching objectives of the WCRP are:
1) to determine the predictability of climate; and
2) to determine the effect of human activities on climate

Progress in understanding climate system variability and change makes it possible to address its predictability and to use this predictive knowledge in developing adaptation and mitigation strategies. Such strategies assist the global communities in responding to the impacts of climate variability and change on major social and economic sectors including food security, energy and transport, environment, heath and water resources.

The main foci of WCRP research are:
- Observing changes in the components of the Earth system (atmosphere, oceans, land and cryosphere) and in the interfaces among these components;
- Improving our knowledge and understanding of global and regional climate variability and change, and of the mechanisms responsible for this change;
- Assessing and attributing significant trends in global and regional climates;
- Developing and improving numerical models that are capable of simulating and assessing the climate system for a wide range of space and time scales;
- Investigating the sensitivity of the climate system to natural and human-induced forcing and estimating the changes resulting from specific disturbing influences.