LSU's SCIPP takes lead in helping the Gulf Region

[Comment Below]

By Charles Nunmaker

Climate changes can sometimes be extremely unpredictable. The whole Gulf Region in which we live can be affected by a wide assortment of different climatic disasters including hurricanes, flash floods, tornadoes, droughts and other natural hazards.

The Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program, or SCIPP, is working to help people within the Gulf Region plan for these climatic dangers and learn how to deal with them. SCIPP is a NOAA supported program that is run by both LSU and the University of Oklahoma in order to help and study different climatic circumstances and their effect on a given region.

Lynne Carter recently assumed the role of Associate Director of SCIPP in April. Before that, Carter was the director of the Adaptation Network and the author of the document "Global Climate Change Impacts on the United States" that was released by the White House. Since accepting her role with SCIPP, Carter has been working with OU on climatic research and the climate's impact on our region.

"SCIPP itself is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association - NOAA - supported RISA program," said Carter. "RISA stands for regional integrated sciences and assessment, and the goal is to serve climate research information needs for this region."

Carter continued, "RISAs are kind of unique in that they are stakeholder driven research programs that engage and focus on regional climate issues that are of importance to a specific region in which they are."

With their research, different RISA programs around the country alert and educate the leaders and inhabitants of different regions on how to best deal with these climatic hazards.

SCIPP was the ninth RISA to be established in the country. Last year, SCIPP was funded by a $3.8 million grant from the NOAA to research and focus on extreme climatic events in the southern United States.

"We're starting our program actually with a survey that we just sent out to find out from people what it is they want to know and how they want to know it," said Carter. "The survey is actually aimed at evaluating local level and state hazard planning processes that are already in place. You know who is doing what already, so we can kind of see where there might be some missing information or missing places. "

Last week, SCIPP held a presentation in collaboration with several other LSU Departments and organizations that had Stephen Schneider, one of the top global warming experts in the world, as their main speaker to present his research on climate change and its effects.

Along with OU's program management, Lynne Carter also held a World Café in Austin, Texas, last August. Together, Hocker and Carter worked with different teams from the National Fisheries and Wildlife Services and the United States Geological Survey - USGS.

"A World Café is kind of like you want people sitting around having a discussion as if they were in a café talking about something, only this was a little bit more structured where we developed questions to help [the teams] focus on issues that they need to be focusing on," said Carter. "It's all stuff that they have to deal with, and we were helping them to focus on certain questions that are important for them to move forward."

The biggest factor with climatic change is that it's unavoidable. That is why SCIPP is researching and sharing its results in order to further prevent major disasters from occurring. To learn more about SCIPP, go to southernclimate.org.

Originally Published: Issue 821 - October 28, 2009

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