Community Climate Intervention Strategies Project, 2020
The Community Climate Intervention Strategies Project has been funded by the UCAR President’s Strategic Initiative Funds (https://internal.ucar.edu/president/strategic-initiative-fund) since the beginning of 2019 with extensions till December 2020, and has been let by ACOM and several NCAR labs (CGD, MMM, RAL, EOL) and UCP programs (COMET and SciEd). After the initial NCAR Climate Intervention Strategies workshop in July 2019 (https://www2.acom.ucar.edu/workshop/ncarucar-climate-intervention-strategies-ncis-workshop-2019) the project has expanded to a community project including 10 NCAR/UCP and currently 6 members from universities and NOAA.
The mission of the CCIS project is to integrate currently disparate research communities to develop an interdisciplinary research program responsive to the complexity of holistically assessing climate intervention strategies to achieve a sustainable future climate. Due to a delay in the planned CCIS workshop in April 15, 2020 to an online workshop in October 28-30, 2020, the CCIS project organized a successful webinar series on various topics related to climate intervention strategies, including a Kickoff webinar with two excellent speakers motivating the need to establish a research framework, followed by seven webinars with 27 expert presentations: Scenario Development; Solar Radiation Management; Carbon Dioxide Removal; Communication, Education, and Outreach; Observations and Lab studies; Impacts; and Ethics
https://www2.acom.ucar.edu/workshop/ccis-2020-webinars. The webinars have been recorded and became a valued resource to the community.
Following the webinar series, the Community Climate Interventions Strategies workshop was held virtually from Oct 28 to 30, 2020. 250 national and international participants from over 50 universities and 30 different government and private agencies joined CCIS Steering Committee members in plenary and breakout sessions for three hours each day. Workshop activities focused on developing an agenda and framework for an international, community-based interdisciplinary research program that aims to holistically assess a portfolio of climate intervention strategies. Preliminary recommendations by the research community include the creation of seven science-themed initial working groups, integration of communication and interdisciplinary research design specialists, and the development of a central communication and resource hub to facilitate associated knowledge exchange. A website https://www.ccis.ucar.edu/ has been already created that will include a community Exchange Forum and additional information on working groups going forward.