Antonio Navarra – President of the CMCC Foundation –  introduces the Annual Report 2015:
“A snapshot of the year that will be will be remembered as the year of the Agreement on Climate, and a glimpse towards the future that 2015 has  prepared for us.”

The world after Paris will be intriguing, exciting, and stimulating for climate change scientific research. Yet, it will also be a world that will bring on new challenges, probably more demanding than past ones, for the sciences involved in climate change that must be addressed with a stronger sense of interdisciplinarity. This is a glimpse towards the future that 2015 has  prepared for us.

2015 will be remembered as the year of the Agreement on Climate. The COP21 in Paris was in December, yet it was present in every speech regarding climate-related sciences throughout the entire year. In the process, CMCC has done its part. We have contributed with our participation in numerous workshops, scientific meetings, and events where the technical aspects of the complex issues were discussed.

The Conference ended with an agreement that was expected by the international community. Obviously, the final text registered positive and negative remarks, optimistic and pessimistic comments, but it certainly represented a step forward on the path of knowledge and the search for solutions to the problems that arise from the interaction of the climatic system with society, economies, and the environment.

Scientific research has had a decisive, fundamental role in this long and complex process. Every step forward taken in the field of climate policies  and the raising awareness of a very complex issue such as climate change, leads science to have a increasingly important role. On one hand, it is the most recent and in-depth scientific findings produced by the international community that provide the information on which the discussions are based involving public and private decision makers, the civil society, and public opinion, on all levels, from global to  regional. On the other hand, the year that has come to an end with the Paris Agreement, opens a new page for research that, more than ever, is called upon to provide the knowledge required to build the tools useful in reaching  the goals that the international community has established for itself.

2015 ended by opening a new, engaging challenge in the field of climate research: facing this challenge will mean working with efficient technologies and fresh innovations that can only arise from an interdisciplinary collaboration among different expertise and know-how.

In order to be ready to best face this challenge, CMCC has developed a series of modification with the objective  of making our scientific research effort even more efficient and effective than it has been so far.

Since December 10^th, 2015, CMCC has finally acquired the legal status of CMCC Foundation – Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. This new legal status will allow the Center to operate in an improved and steadier manner, in accordance with its own statuary goals and also broaden the spectrum of collaborations with institutional and private entities.

CMCC’s organizational structure was arranged in a way to make activities, skills, and responsibilities on a strategic level more evident than they were in the past, with regard to scientific operability and the production of research services. This new organization will enable us to best implement the interdisciplinary dimension that is indispensable for research regarding climate change and that has been a hallmark for CMCC since its foundation.

In this report, we propose a snapshot of our 2015. A year that has witnessed the Center begin its commitment in research projects for Horizon 2020, as well as grow in the number of papers published in important journals, and improve its position on climate research within the international community.

We are confident that the changes introduced in 2015 will allow us to  improve further on this path and  be part of one of the most innovative challenges that the history of sciences and policies regarding climate has ever experienced. The world after Paris will be exciting and challenging. Science will be called upon to provide the knowledge required  to produce effective tools and support informed decisions. CMCC will be there to make its contribution.

Download: the CMCC Annual Report 2015