Natural Decadal Climate Variability: Phenomena, Mechanisms, and Predictability

Natural decadal climate variability (DCV) and its interactions with anthropogenic climate change (ACC) are vitally important to understand to predict the future of the Earth’s climate. This book, after familiarizing readers with the importance of understanding and predicting DCV phenomena and its distinction from ACC phenomena, comprehensively explains the physics of DCV, integrating paleoclimate proxy and modern instrument-based data and simulations with climate models.

Features of this book:

• Uniquely focuses on natural DCV, its physics, and its predictability
• Presents an integrated view of DCV phenomena based on approximately 700 peer-reviewed publications cited in the book
• Includes research on influences of decadal variability in solar emissions on the Earth’s climate, with a historical perspective going back several centuries
• Describes progress in decadal climate predictability and prediction research, with a historical perspective on weather and climate predictability research

This book is an excellent resource for graduate students, faculty members and other teachers and researchers, and anyone who is interested in learning about a very important component of the puzzle of the changing climate.

"This book provides a comprehensive review…. Highlighted throughout the book are potential links between DCV and solar variability, a fascinating topic that has engaged our minds for centuries. Written by an expert with more than 30 years’ experience, this book should be an invaluable resource for students and researchers interested in how our climate will evolve over the coming decades."

Doug Smith, Decadal Climate Prediction Leader, Meteorological Office Hadley Centre, UK

"This book is a tour de force by the author who has spent his career studying decadal climate variability. He brings new insights to the vast scope of this topic, providing clearly understandable descriptions of the various aspects."

Gerald Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Colorado, USA

Dr. Vikram Mehta earned his M.Sc. in Physics in 1977 and his PhD in Space Sciences in 1979 from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad, India. He then became an Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Research Fellow at the Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad, India. He studied upper atmospheric physics at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, from 1982 to 1984, earning a post-graduate diploma in physics. A strong interest in more application-oriented scientific research led him to the Department of Meteorology at the Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, where he earned his M.S. in 1986 and Ph.D. in meteorology in 1990. After his Ph.D. work on natural decadal climate variability (DCV), Vikram was a research scientist from 1990 to 2002 at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)–Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland–College Park, conducting further research on DCV. Strongly motivated to use climate science for societal benefits, Vikram founded the Center for Research on the Changing Earth System (CRCES), a nonprofit, scientific research organization in Columbia, Maryland, in 2002. Currently, he is the President and Executive Director of CRCES, which specializes in research on DCV and its impacts on water, food, energy, and water-borne transportation. Vikram also served as the Executive Director of the Indian Centre for Climate and Societal Impacts Research (ICCSIR) in Ahmedabad, India, from 2008 to 2013. Vikram’s major research interests include understanding and prediction of DCV; assessment and prediction of DCV impacts on regional and global water– food–energy–public health securities; and climate and public policy. Vikram has published more than 150 research papers and conference/workshop contributions. For outstanding achievements in climate science, the Non-Resident Indian Welfare Society of India bestowed on Vikram the Mahatma Gandhi Samman (Honor) in 2012 in a ceremony in the House of Lords of the U.K. Parliament in London; and their highest award, the Hind Ratna (Jewel of India), in 2015 in New Delhi, India.