WCRP-Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, Montevideo, 17-21 March 2014 - Call for Papers

Climate variability and climate change are now recognized as a significant threat to livelihoods across the world. Water shortages, more intense tropical storms, floods, coastal inundation and longer or recurrent periods of drought are already impacting the health, life and livelihoods of millions of people around the globe, whose reliance on resource dependent activities makes them vulnerable. In addition, there are an increasing number of positive experiences in incorporating climate information for decision making in many socio-economic sectors sensitive to climate.

Meeting the challenges posed by current and projected impacts of climate variability and change requires both a solid information base as well as a synergistic, multi-disciplinary response. This will necessarily require a balance between (i) research focused on improving climate monitoring and predictions at regional and local scales; (ii) research oriented by the demands of socioeconomic sectors sensitive to climate, and (iii) research on the process of informing policy and decision-making in the different socioeconomic sectors.

Taking into consideration this backdrop the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is organizing the “WCRP-Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, developing, linking, and applying climate knowledge" in Montevideo Uruguay on 17-21 of March, 2014.

The main goals of this Conference are to:

- Address critical knowledge challenges gaps in understanding, simulating and predicting climate variability and change in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

- Identify gaps and ways to overcome limitations in the knowledge networks that include basic and applied climate science and processes to inform policy and decisions relevant for the Latin American and Caribbean region.

The conference will provide a space for building interdisciplinary dialogues between climate scientists, social scientists, policy makers, practitioners, and key boundary institutions. It will be organized around key thematic areas, which will encourage dialogue between the climate, social sciences and decision-making communities.

Information for those wishing to submit an abstract:

All interested researchers and practitioners are invited to select a Conference Theme and submit a relevant abstract of no longer than 500 words through this link: (http://www.cima.fcen.uba.ar/WCRP/).

Conference Themes and sub-themes are (but not restricted to):

1. Water & energy

- Real time monitoring of regional hydrological systems (surface, atmospheric and underground water, snow)

- Advances, knowledge gaps and limitations of seasonal, interannual and decadal predictability of water resources

- Use of climate information in water-sensitive activities: Successful and not-so-successful stories.

- Use of climate information in the energy sector at different timescales (hydro, solar and wind)

- Hydrological extreme events: from landslides to droughts

- Land-surface feedbacks, including effects of land and water management

- Climate information and Water quality issues

- Long term planning and climate scenarios

2. Agriculture and ecosystems , Climate risk management approaches, methods, and experiences

- Land-use changes and their feedbacks on climate

- Climate,biodiversity and ecosytem services

- Prediction of extreme climate events affecting agriculture and ecosystems

- Agro-meteorological models

- Vulnerability of agricultural land use systems to extreme climate events

- Agricultural planning based on climate information

- Climate knowledge for informing land use planning and policy

3. Human Health

- Direct climate effects on health and human lives

- Indirect climate effects on health and human lives

- Linkages between climate variability and infectious diseases

- Linkages between climate variability and non-infectious diseases

- Monitoring and Modeling weather/climate/environment phenomena related with human health

- Urban planning and climate

4. Coastal zones

- Role of ocean variability on climate of coastal areas

- Relevant data sets for coastal studies (including atmosphere and ocean observations from satellite or otherwise) Climate impact on the economic activities of coastal zones (including, shipping, fisheries, tourism, off-shore drilling, etc.)

- Coastal activities and sea level rise

- Tailored climate forecasts for coastal zones activities

- Small islands and climate change (projections, impacts, responses)

5. Urban environments – Cities

- Air pollution, urban heat islands and their role on climate variability at different time scales

- Air quality monitoring, including data derived from remote sensing

- Air quality management strategies and plans based on climate information

- Extreme events and risk management in cities

6. Climate monitoring, prediction and predictability

- Prediction from Subseasonal to Multi-decadal Scales

- Detecting, Understanding and Predicting Extreme Climate Events

- Extreme events in a warming world

- Climate System Observations, Reprocessing, Reanalysis and Climate Data Records

- Local and remote influences on climate: land-sea-ice-atmosphere interactions, stratosphere-troposphere interactions, solar activity, volcano activity and varying GHGs concentrations.

The conference will be held in English. Multi-disciplinary projects or programs oriented to accelerate the use of climate knowledge to address development needs, either currently being implemented or planned to be in the near future are strongly encouraged to participate.

Opening Date for abstract submission: 22 July 2013

Closing Date for abstracts: 30 September 2013

Acceptance of abstracts: By mid November 2013

Registration fees

Early bird registration (up to 30 November 2013)

Regular: US$ 275

Students: US$ 175

Registration fee after 1 December 2013:

Regular: US$ 375

Students: US$ 275

Congress dinner: US$ 50

Limited financial support is available to students and early career scientists