The Climate and Ocean — Variability, Predictability, and Change (CLIVAR) project has elected Professor Benjamin Horton to be a member. The CLIVAR project is one of the four core projects of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). 

Prof Horton, Chair of the Asian School of the Environment and a Principal Investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, will be working on the theme “Sea-Level Rise and Regional Impacts”, one of the cross-cutting science questions – also called Grand Challenges – implemented by the WCRP. Together with an international group of scientists, each focusing on a specific region, he will study sea-level variability in and around Southeast Asia. 

CLIVAR’s overarching goals are to establish a better understanding of climate variability and dynamics, predictability, and change, in order to contribute to current knowledge of sea-level rise globally, regionally, and locally. All this will help to foster the development of sea-level predictions and projections for coastal zone management.

CLIVAR-supported research provides the climate science that underpins the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including national commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report, for which Prof Horton is a review editor.

“I think being part of a global framework to tackle climate questions is vital. The topic of sea-level rise is too large and too complex to be tackled by a single nation, agency, or scientific discipline,” said Prof Horton. “Through international science coordination and partnerships, CLIVAR contributes to advancing our understanding of the multi-scale dynamic interactions between natural and social systems that affect sea-level rise.”