Announcement
The IAMC Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and the SSC’s Advisory Council met virtually Thursday March 10th, 2022, to discuss a range of issues including: The 2021 Virtual IAMC annual meeting and planning for 2022. Of particular concern is planning for the 2022 annual meeting and how to plan in the
The IAMC Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and the SSC’s Advisory Council met virtually Thursday March 10th, 2022, to discuss a range of issues including:
The IAMC SSC welcomed three new members, Stéphane Hallegatte, Mikiko Kainuma, and Miles Perry to the Council. We thank the IAMC Advisory Council members who participated in the March 10th conversation.
The SSC briefed the Council on the results of the 2021 IAMC 14th annual meeting. The 2021 IAMC annual meeting was held virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions. The meeting was extremely successful. It engaged 421 participants. More than twice the number of participants at previous in-person meetings. Highlights included 105 presentations in parallel sessions, 10 plenary speakers, and 60 posters.
Planning is underway for a 2021, in-person, meeting, tentatively scheduled for November 29th through December 1st. Declining COVID-19 infection rates have increased hope that a return to in-person meetings will be possible. Nevertheless, the future remains uncertain making planning for the annual meeting more difficult than in pre-COVID-19 years.
The tentative timeline for the 2022 annual meeting is
Discussion of how to plan considered whether to have an in-person or hybrid meeting. Considerations included how many participants would choose to attend in person if virtual attendance was an option, how many participants would choose to attend if in-person were the only option, what costs and constraints would be imposed by a virtual participation option, whether a virtual participation option would decrease attendance to the point where the in-person option fell below critical mass.
Integrated assessment modeling has proved helpful as a decision support tool. An important goal of the IAMC is to expand participation and capability to include young researchers and researchers in under-represented parts of the world. Saritha Sudharmma Vishwanathan opened a discussion on young researcher participation with an update on the Young Scholar Award. This was followed by Roberto Schaeffer and Shinichiro Fujimori describing efforts to reach under-represented parts of the world and the proposed new Scientific Working Group on National Scenarios. Advisory Council members offered a range of ideas that might help the IAMC achieve its goals of expanding capability around the world and engaging the next generation of researchers and leaders.
Elmar Kriegler offered remarks on scenario activities ranging from the upcoming Scenarios workshop to be held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in June to the need for scenarios to inform the UNFCCC 2023 Global stocktake.
Jae Edmonds
IAMC Advisory Council Liaison