Project Leaders

Climate Variability in the Alaskan North Slope Coastal Region

Linda O. Mearns, PhD.

Linda O. Mearns is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado and Deputy Director of the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group (ESIG). She holds a Ph.D. in Geography/Climatology from UCLA. She has performed research and published in the areas of crop-climate interactions, climate change scenario formation, climate change impacts on agro-ecosystems, and analysis of climate variability and extreme climate events in both observations and and climate models. She has particularly worked extensively with regional climate models. She has most recently published papers on exploring the effect of different spatial scales of climate change scenarios on determination of agricultural impacts of climate change. She has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1992, 1995, and 2001 Reports on the subjects of climate variability in general circulation models, regional climate change, and climate scenario formation. She is a member of the IPCC Task Group on Scenarios for Climate Impact Assessment, and was co-convening Lead Author for the chapter on Climate Scenario Development in IPCC Working Group I for the IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001), and a Lead Author on two other chapters in Working Groups I and II: one on Regional Projections of Climatic Change and the other in WGII on Scenarios. She has just completed an integrated assessment project funded by the EPA, NASA, and USDA, on the effects of changes in climate variability on crop production in the Southeastern U. S. Her current projects include: an Integrated Assessment of Environmental Problems on the North Slope of Alaska (funded by NSF), Climate Change Effects on Crops in the Yangtze River Area of China (funded by NASA) , and Uncertainty in Datasets used for Agricultural Assessments (NSF-MMIA). She served on the National Academy Panel on Climate, Ecosystems, Infectious Diseases, and Human Health, March 1999-June 2001 and currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Panel on Emerging Infectious Diseases of the 21st Century. She also leads the NCAR Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Initiative, which includes plans to form a climate/health research and educational program.

Shannon McNeeley, Visiting Scientist

Prior to the current Circle of Knowledge project Shannon McNeeley was the Principal Investigator on the NSF Alaskan Climate Affairs project. The purpose of the project was to get input on creating a cross-disciplinary research, education and outreach program in Alaska integrating knowledge and information from western science and Alaska Native traditional knowledge on climate and climate-related topics. She attended statewide tribal environmental conferences and workshops in Alaska as well as co-facilitated meetings with the Alaska Native Science Commission to get input from Native and non-native experts on how to create and structure such a program. Through the input received in the Alaska Climate Affairs project, McNeeley developed the concept for the proposed Circle of Knowledge community-based research project. Her focus as an associate scientist at NCAR has been climate impacts on vulnerable populations and underrepresented groups and building capacity in research and education for those groups. More recently her focus has been on Indigenous Knowledge on climate and weather and how it can be a complimentary source of knowledge to understand environmental change and adaptation to those changes. McNeeley was also a co-PI in 2001-2003 on a NSF funded capacity building project in the U.S./Mexico border region with a focus on impacts of climate and extreme events in that area.

Exploring the Feasibility Limits of Adaptation Strategies to Sea-Level Rise

Susi Moser, Ph.D.

Susi is a geographer by training (Ph.D. 1997, Clark University), whose research foci for the last ten years have been the human dimensions of global change. She has focused on uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change (causes, vulnerability, impacts, and adaptive responses), especially focused on coastal areas.

During a post-doc at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in the Global Environmental Assessment project, which examined the role and influence of science and assessments in policy- and decision-making, she became particularly interested in the science-policy interaction. She also worked for the Heinz Center in Washington, DC on a congressionally mandated project on coastal erosion and management.

From 1999-2003, Susi worked for the Union of Concerned Scientists as their staff scientist for climate change, managing climate change impacts projects and working in the trenches of effective climate change communication and social mobilization for change. Since September 2003 she is back in the world of research. Her research foci now are: (1) effective climate change communication and social change; (2) science–stakeholder (in particular decision-makers) interactions; (3) coastal impacts of climate change and effective adaptation strategies; and (4) health impacts of climate change.