In recent years, the international community has achieved significant developments with respect to climate change measures. The Paris Agreement in 2015 aims at keeping a global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, while pursuing efforts to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. This year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees and related greenhouse gas emission pathways. The IPCC is also preparing the Sixth Assessment Report on climate change, whose contribution from the working group 1 is to be published in 2021. There is a growing interest in future climate in the international community, which calls for more advanced research on climate change and variability, based on state-of-the-art science and technology.

This workshop aims to bring together scientists who have an interest in discussing climate change and variability in the past and the future. The workshop provides a forum to share experiences and ideas on topics including 1)natural climate variability such as ENSO, PDO, MJO, monsoons, 2)human-induced climate changes, 3)development of Global Climate Models (GCMs) and Earth System Models (ESMs), 4)near-term climate prediction, and 5)attribution of observed weather/climate phenomena.

The workshop is co-organized by the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) , Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (AORI) , National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) , and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC). The Japan side of the organizers are sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture , Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) through Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models (TOUGOU Program).

Workshop photo:

Invited speakers:

• Ming Zhao (GFDL/NOAA)
• Seung Ki Min (POSTECH)
• Stephen Yeager (NCAR)
• Camilo Mora (University of Hawaii at Manoa)
• Fei-Fei Jin (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Meeting conveners:

• Tomoo Ogura (NIES)
• Kazuyoshi Kikuchi (IPRC)
• Kelvin Richards (IPRC)
• Masahiro Watanabe (AORI, UT)