“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

This old saying neglects the fact that all of us are inadvertently doing something about the weather – we are changing it. The reality of global climate change is now undeniable and the likelihood is high that human activities have caused the majority of the changes observed in the past half-century. The citizens and businesses of Virginia are not exempt from the changes Earth will experience during the rest of this century – there will be a new normal and we all need to prepare for it. Dr. Kinter will describe George Mason University research emphasizing what we have learned about predicting future weather and climate in the mid-Atlantic region and what remains to be done to advance our understanding to actionable predictions—right in time for Earth Day.

Dr. Kinter is Director of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) which conducts basic and applied climate research on climate predictability on sub-seasonal and longer time scales, focusing on phenomena such as monsoons, El Niño, and climate change. Dr. Kinter is also a Professor in the department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Earth Sciences and the Climate Dynamics Ph.D. Program of the College of Science. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on climate dynamics, predictability and climate change. After earning his doctorate in geophysical fluid dynamics at Princeton University in 1984, Dr. Kinter served as a National Research Council Associate at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and as a faculty member of the University of Maryland prior to helping to create COLA in 1993. Dr. Kinter has published over 110 peer-reviewed papers in academic journals and he is frequently called to serve on advisory boards and review panels for scientific research and supercomputing program.

This event is cosponsored by George Mason University's Speaker's Bureau.