Geert Jan van Oldenborgh
The 1999-2000 Scientific Report of the KNMI Climate Research and Seismology Department has appeared in 2001. It consists of five articles highlighting the experimental programme at the Climate and Seismology department, and overviews of the projects and results of the departments during 1999-2000. The report can be downloaded as one big PDF file (8MB) or smaller files
(The PDF format can be handled by Adobe Acrobat Reader and Ghostview, both of which are available free of charge, Acrobat at Adobe's Dutch site or American site, Ghostscript from Aladdin). The report can also be ordered from the KNMI library.
The 1997-1998 Scientific Report has appeared in 1999. It offers a glimpse of the many and wide-ranging scientific and policy supporting activities of the Department. You can view and print the Biennial Scientific Report in PDF format as part 1 (2.5 MB) and part 2 (1.7 MB). Three very different topics were of particular interest during the period covered by this Report.
The El Niņo of 1997/1998 attracted huge media and scientific attention. El Niņo - Sourthern Oscillation (ENSO) is an area of research with a long tradition at KNMI. It was Berlage who between the nineteen-thirties and nineteen-sixties made important contributions to our understanding of the Southern Oscillation. The latest results of our interest in the subject are summarised here.
With the increase of air traffic, concern is expressed about the environmental and climate effects of aircraft emissions. The KNMI contributions to this active area of research and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on this issue are summarised here.
Our Seismology Division played a leading role in supporting the negotiations that led to the conclusion of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and continues to be instrumental in implementing a detection and verification regime for that Treaty.
The Research Department, as part of KNMI, is financed by the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. An important aspect of our task is to give scientific advice and support to the development and implementation of the policy of the Netherlands Government. We supported the work of the Delegations that negotiated the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the Kyoto Protocol and we advise our Ministers in formulating our Government's climate policy. To carry out these tasks, the Department is first and foremost a research department. As such we develop and maintain close links with sister institutions at home and abroad. At home we are part of the Netherlands Centre for Climate Research (CKO), a joint effort with the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU) of the University of Utrecht and with the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). Abroad we co-operate with many institutions, in particular the Max-Planck-Institutes in Hamburg and Mainz, Germany, in the framework of the International School for Co-operation on Oceanic, Atmospheric and Climate Change studies (COACh). We seek financial support for our work from such organisations as the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO, the EU Framework Programmes and from specialised government-sponsored research programmes like NRP. Such support is essential to guarantee an influx of young people with innovative ideas and to guard and improve the quality of our work by competitively submitting our proposals to critical reviews.