Assessing climate impacts.

Assessing climate impacts involves identifying sources and characteristics of climate variability, and mitigating potential negative impacts of that variability. Associated research focuses on climate driving mechanisms, biosphere-hydrosphere responses and mediation, and human responses. Examples of climate impacts come from 1998 flooding in the Yangtze River Basin and hurricanes in the Caribbean and Central America. Although we have limited understanding of the fundamental driving-response interactions associated with climate variability, increasingly powerful measurement and modeling techniques make assessing climate impacts a rapidly developing frontier of science.