George Mason University

The mission of this program is to train the next generation of scientists in climate dynamics and related fields. Through a comprehensive grounding in coursework, our students learn about how the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface work together to determine the climate. In collaboration with internationally-known scientists, students conduct independent work to further our understanding of climate, how it varies, and how much of it we can predict. Tools in the program include cutting-edge climate models, superb computing facilities, sophisticated statistical techniques, and comprehensive data sets. Our graduates have gone on to work at top laboratories and universities.

Understanding climate variability and predictability poses difficult mathematical, computational, and observational questions that have generated increasing intellectual excitement in recent years. Climate variability has important ramifications for society, from planning for next year's electrical demand and forecasting agricultural production to answering complex questions involving long-term change in global climate, sea level, and biodiversity. While it is impossible to predict day-to-day weather more than a few weeks in advance, progress in predicting El Niño supports the idea that seasonal averages of temperature, rainfall, and other factors may be at least partly predictable months or even years in advance. Likewise, there is a strong scientific basis for predicting long-term changes in global climate due to changing greenhouse gas concentrations.

Climate dynamics faculty members have a blend of expertise in dynamics, statistics, and computational methods. They are heavily involved with national and international collaborations. Faculty members and students work closely with scientists at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), a national leader in climate modeling.

Faculty research focuses on the areas of climate prediction and predictability, climate variability, coupled ocean-atmosphere-land dynamics, and dynamical systems and retrospective analysis. Recent research topics include predictability of weather and climate; modeling of the complex climate system; El Niño dynamics; monsoons; atmosphere-ocean interaction; land-climate interaction; decadal climate variability; ocean circulation theory; and climate change.