World Climate Research Programme

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) coordinates climate research initiatives at an international level. The science activities it supports address cutting-edge topics which cannot be tackled by a single nation, agency or discipline alone. WCRP fosters innovation and collaboration through the organization of global meetings, workshops and conferences. The actual research projects are carried out by scientists worldwide within projects at their home institutions. To ensure that policy makers and end users can benefit from latest scientific advances, WCRP represents the state-of-the-art knowledge of its community toward high-level policy fora as well as toward the producers of operational climate predictions.

In the selection of its focus areas, WCRP is guided by the two main objectives stated in its Sponsor's Agreement. These are:

1. to determine the predictability of climate; and
2. to determine the effect of human activities on climate.

The better variability and change in the climate system are understood, the better will be society's knowledge on climate predictability and its own predictive capacity. Equipped with tools for seamless climate predictions, global communities can better respond to impacts of climate variability and change on major social and economic sectors including food security, energy, transport, environment, health and water resources. WCRP contributes to such services to society by advancing and communicating the global state of the art in climate science.

WCRP collaborates closely with related programmes at international and national level, including on observations, modelling, interactions between society and the climate system, and similar relevant topics.

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) maintains and advances a large number of initiatives in climate research, drawing on a broad range of approaches and instruments:

• Earth system components: WCRP's longest-standing instruments are its Core Projects, each of which examines (roughly) one Earth system component and/or interface between components. Such comprehensive investigation of the climate system's components forms the fundamental basis for prediction capabilities around climate variability and change.

WCRP activities that cut across Earth system components are organized as follows:

• Interdisciplinary emphasis projects: Highly targeted research issues that are both specific and cross-cutting are advanced within the instruments of the "WCRP Grand Challenges". They are directly relevant to society and designed to overcome long-standing, specific barriers. Read more about the current emphasis areas on the WCRP Grand Challenges webpage.
   
• Regional downscaling and regional climate information: WCRP supports the needs of governments for region-specific climate information. Its CORDEX project (The "Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment") aims to advance and coordinate the science and application of regional climate downscaling through global partnerships. Its framework for regional climate information includes the WCRP Coordination Office for Regional Climate (CORA) and the WCRP Working Group on Regional Climate (WGRC), among others.
   
• Modeling, Observations, and Infrastructure: Advances in modern climate science are not possible without improvement and maintenance of modeling and data infrastructure as well as sustained and expanded observations. Within WCRP, a number of advisory councils, working groups, and other initiatives act as focal points and innovation hubs on such resources and tools. Across the global community, WCRP co-sponsors a number of according activities together with its partners. Full information can be found on WCRP's pages on unifying themes and further initiatives/activities.
   
• The next generation of climate scientists: Together with several partner programmes, WCRP undertakes active steps for capacity development and engaging the next generation of climate scientists. It aims to mainstream these into its core activities wherever possible, fostering a diverse, innovative and knowledgeable community.

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Science Council (ISC) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO.

Scientific and strategic guidance for WCRP is provided by a group of 18 expert scientists appointed by WCRP's sponsors, who together form the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee (JSC). 

The implementation of JSC recommendations as well as everyday activities of WCRP are supported by around eight full-time staff (the WCRP "Joint Planning Staff", JPS), who work in the WCRP Secretariat hosted by WMO in Geneva, Switzerland.

WCRP activities are reported on in annual meetings of the JSC, in annual constitutive body meetings of WCRP's three sponsors as well as through regular publications on the WCRP homepage.

Several of WCRP's initiatives (for example, its Core Projects) again feature their own Scientific Steering Groups as well as supporting Secretariats.

The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) was established in 1980 under the joint sponsorship of the International Council for Science (ICSU, now merged into the International Science Council, ISC) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and, since 1993, has also been sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC of UNESCO).

Since its establishment, the WCRP has made enormous contributions to advancing climate science. As a result of the Programme’s efforts, it is now possible for climate scientists to monitor, simulate and project global climate with unprecedented accuracy so that climate information can be used for governance, in decision-making and in support of a wide range of practical end-user applications.

Widely recognized past Core Projects by the WCRP were:

• the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) project, which developed the foundations for prediction of El Niño;
• World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), which provided the first consistent picture of the global ocean circulation; and
• Arctic Climate System Study (ACSYS), which demonstrated the possibility of intensified climate warming in the northern high latitudes.

Building on these past successes, and ensuring the readiness of its present activities for the next decade, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is developing a new strategic plan for 2019-2029. It will be complemented by an implementation plan outlining a path to achieving WCRP's strategic goals for the next decade.