Climate Variability & Predictability (CVP)

The Climate Variability and Predictability (CVP) Program supports research that enhances our process-level understanding of the climate system through observation, modeling, analysis, and field studies. This vital knowledge is needed to improve climate models and predictions so that scientists and society can better anticipate the impacts of future climate variability and change. CVP-supported research underpins many of the environmental assessments, weather forecasts, and climate projections used by the nation to make decisions about infrastructure development, aviation, farming, ecosystem management, emergency preparedness, and other critical areas. CVP maintains a portfolio of projects intended to examine the large scale components of the earth, how they influence each other, guided by the following questions:

• How can we better understand and anticipate the global and regional impacts of climate variability and change?
• What foundational knowledge, through observation, modeling, analysis, and field studies, do we need in order to improve climate models for short-term predictions and longer-term projections, which will improve our ability to assess risk and inform decision-making?
• How can we close the predictability gap between weather models and climate models to inform areas of progress toward seamless weather-to-climate modeling for temperature, precipitation, and other information important to society and decision-making?

To achieve its mission, the CVP Program invests in NOAA mission-critical research, which is carried out at NOAA and other federal laboratories, NOAA Cooperative Institutes, and academic institutions. The Program also coordinates its sponsored projects with major national and international scientific bodies including the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) – especially CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean Variability, Predictability and Change) and GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Exchanges) programs – and the U.S. Global Change Research program (USGCRP).

In order to to understand the dynamics of, and sources of predictability in, the coupled ocean-atmosphere-land-ice system across all climate time scales, CVP supports current projects that:

• Explore existing biases (errors) in weather and climate model simulations with a focus on processes, in order to generate new discoveries and refine existing understanding of these processes.
• Conduct field studies to improve our understanding of how the ocean, atmosphere, land, and cryosphere work together to make the weather and climate that we live in.
• Research climate variability on longer (up to multi-decadal) timescales through improved understanding of such phenomena as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, El Niño/La Niña (ENSO), and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
• Focus on regional climate variability and its connections to the global weather and climate system, such as interrogating the mechanisms that affect Arctic temperatures and sea ice, climate impacts of fisheries, explaining extremes, and the potential to improve regional predictions.