Societal Dimensions
Working Group SDWG

Overview

The Societal Dimensions Working Group (SDWG) seeks to improve understanding of the interactions between human and earth systems by enhancing NCAR's Community Earth System Model (CESM) and its application through studies of climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation that use CESM output in their analyses. To pursue this mission, the working group:

• Fosters dialogue between the CESM community and other researchers and practitioners involved in the interaction of society and climate change;
• Identifies needs of users in the scientific and applications communities for new developments in CESM and communicates them to relevant CESM working groups;
• Carries out CESM simulations of particular relevance to scientific and applications communities;
• Reviews and approves new CESM code that provides linkages to human system models.

A wide range of topics is of interest to the working group, including interactions between the climate system and the use of energy, land, and water; emissions of air pollutants and their consequences; socio-ecological impacts of climate change; geoengineering; and ocean acidification. The working group is also interested in diagnosis of CESM performance from an applications perspective, with an emphasis on model improvement.

Participation and Meetings

SDWG participants come from the fields of integrated assessment modeling, climate impacts modeling, adaptation and vulnerability research, social sciences, and climate modeling. Participants also include resource management and policy analysis practitioners in relevant research areas.

Participation in the SDWG is open. SDWG meetings are held twice per year, in June in Breckenridge, Colorado (jointly with all other working groups) and in the winter at NCAR. Meetings typically include talks based on submitted abstracts describing work of relevance to the group, as well as presentations or discussions related to the four types of working group activities described above. Announcements of upcoming meetings and all other SDWG news is communicated through the SDWG email list.

SDWG Liaison Information

• None at this time