CHANCE Explores Role of Statistics in Climate Research

With rising sea levels, devastating hurricanes, and frigid, record-breaking winter storms hitting the American south, the December issue of CHANCE is well timed to educate the public on the importance of statistics in climate research. From examining complexities of intense, massive data collection and statistical analysis techniques to featuring new proposed statistical methodology that could be a “game changer” in understanding our climate system to addressing uncertainty in current measurements, CHANCE takes readers behind the scenes of climate change and its impact on public policy and daily life with experts from academia, government, and business providing scientific insight that can change the way we interact with the environment.

CHANCE website

“Climate change is the environmental challenge of our and the next generation. Humans play a role in creating problems, but can also play a role in addressing them,” notes Scott Evans, editor of CHANCE and senior research scientist in the department of biostatistics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The special issue includes the following articles and columns:

  • “The Role of Statistics in Climate Research” by Peter F. Craigmile, professor in the department of statistics at The Ohio State University
  • “How We Know the Earth Is Warming” by Peter Guttorp, professor at the Norwegian Computing Center and professor emeritus in the department of statistics at the University of Washington
  • “Instruments, Proxies, and Simulations: Exploring the Imperfect Measures of Climate” by Craigmile and Bo Li, associate professor in the department of statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • “Climate Model Intercomparison” by Mikyoung Jun, associate professor in the department of statistics at Texas A&M University
  • “Climate Change Detection and Attribution: Letting Go of the Null?” by Dorit Hammerling, section leader for statistics and data science at the Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences of the National Center for Atmospheric Research
  • “Quantifying the Risk of Extreme Events Under Climate Change” by Eric Gilleland, project scientist at the Research Applications Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Richard W. Katz, senior scientist at the Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Philippe Naveau, senior scientist at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
  • “Statistics and the Future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet” by Murali Haran, professor in the department of statistics at Penn State University; Won Chang, assistant professor in the department of mathematical sciences at the University of Cincinnati; Klaus Keller, professor in the department of geosciences and director of SCRiM at Penn State University and adjunct professor in the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University; Robert Nicholas, research associate at the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and managing director of SCRiM at Penn State University; and David Pollard, senior scientist at the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State University
  • “Ecological Impacts of Climate Change: The Importance of Temporal and Spatial Synchrony” by Christopher K. Wilke, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Statistics at the University of Missouri
  • “Projecting Health Impacts of Climate Change: Embracing an Uncertain Future” by Howard H. Chang, associate professor in the department of biostatistics and bioinformatics at Emory University; Stefanie Ebelt Sarnat, associate professor in the department of environmental health at Emory University; and Yang Liu, associate professor in the department of environmental health at Emory University