Welcome to the Department of Climate Dynamics!
The Department of Climate Dynamics of the College of Science is a focal point for research and graduate education in climate science at George Mason University.
While there is no unambiguous definition of "climate," climate dynamics is generally considered to encompass processes that determine the behavior of the atmosphere, ocean and land surface averaged over timescales of weeks to millenia. Understanding climate variability and predictability poses difficult mathematical, computational, and observational questions that have generated increased intellectual excitement in recent years. Because atmospheric behavior is strongly coupled to the oceans and land surface, physical oceanography and land surface physics can also be considered part of the science of climate dynamics.
Understanding climate variability has important ramifications for society, from planning for next year's electrical demand to answering complex questions involving long-term global change. While it is thought to be theoretically impossible to predict day-to-day weather more than a few weeks in advance, recent progress in predicting El Nino supports the idea that seasonal averages of temperature, rainfall, etc., may be at least partly predictable months or even years in advance. Research and teaching in the Climate Dynamics Program aims to understand a wide-range of climate-related phenomena, with an emphasis on the predictability of interannual variability.
The Department benefits from close ties with scientists at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) and the Center for Research on Environment and Water (CREW) of the Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES), an independent nonprofit research institution. IGES is located in Calverton, MD, north of Washington, D.C., and about 25 miles from Mason's Fairfax Campus.