Climate variability impacts on agriculture and food supplies, but it is also a major cause of migrations through the effects of drought, shoreline erosion, coastal flooding and climate-related epidemics. Any effort to address these issues can benefit from sharper predictions of climate variability.

The 16th international CAS-TWAS-WMO Forum, to be held 18-20 September in Beijing, China, will explore improvements and continuing challenges in prediction across time spans from a season to a decade. The deadline for online registration is 1 July.

The forum will bring together international experts in the field, under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and TWAS. The event is organised by the CAS-TWAS Center of Excellence for Climate and Environmental Sciences (ICCES), which is hosted within the CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics.

Forum participants will explore global efforts in climate forecasts and focus on solutions aimed at obtaining more precise predictions. Some of the major topics in the conference will be reducing uncertainties and errors in forecast models and using advanced data assimilation techniques for better predictions.

Cristina Serra