The institute’s goal is to become a top level institute in the world in which international collaboration and communication is a key point. International cooperation and exchange have always been the emphasis of IAP, which has scientific and technological exchanges with over 30 countries and regions. Under established cooperative connections with scientific research institutions in the U.S.A., the European Union, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Canada, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Norway, etc., IAP has signed international cooperative protocols with the institutions and conducted highly effective cooperative research, obtained a series of promising achievements, and trained scores of young excellent talent.

With the implementation of project collaboration, academic intercourse, advanced academic forums, human resource intercommunion as well as the building-up of a cooperative research center, IAP is able to learn and absorb the advanced experience from colleagues both in China and around the world, and is able to improve its scientific research level as well as its self-innovation, gaining much higher knowledge to its own advantage.

The enhancement of international cooperative research projects and the implementation of research programs are two of the most important measures in the process of internationalization. Since 2000, IAP has started more than 50 international cooperative relationships with the U.S.A., Japan, Thailand, Korea, Germany, England, Norway, France, Belgium, and others, which have greatly improved the international status of IAP and accelerated the progress of science here. The main cooperative projects include:

• Long-term cooperative research with the U.S. Department of Energy on climate change
  The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has been in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy on the greenhouse effect and climate change for 18 years. Through this, the Academy has gained many outstanding results, including personnel cultivation and the development of climate research, etc., which also greatly promote the development and implementation of climate models at IAP, causing it to become one of the three best models in the world in simulating the East Asian monsoon. The new cycle of cooperation began at the beginning of the 21st century, and the 12th China-America scientific conference was held in October 2003, which planned the research for the next two years.
  
  
• U.N. GEF—The reporting of agricultural greenhouse gas emission in China
  Zheng Xunhua, Huang Yao, and colleagues undertook two Global Environmental Funding (GEF) projects presided by the National Development and Reform Commission from 2001 to 2004. So far, the corresponding tasks regarding agricultural greenhouse gas emission in the GEF projects are the only two items related to climate change sought by the Chinese government, namely, the reporting of Chinese agricultural greenhouse gas emission in stated years and the basic research on emission coefficients and the methods of future reporting. The relevant work on agricultural greenhouse emission in the GEF items indicates that our research in this field has gained the full recognition from the Chinese government and international experts.
  
  
• Carbon-Nitrogen emission process model
  The German Fraunhofer Atmospheric Environment Institute is a first-class research organization. Since the mid 1980s, it has implemented highly effective cooperation and communication with IAP. Together, they have carried out long-term automatic observation experiments of CH4 in paddy fields in South China and obtained a series of classical datasets which are certificated and often cited by the international community. The cooperative research results showed that the amount of CH4 emission in paddy fields announced by IPCC (1990), namely 110 Tg/yr, overestimated the real amount of CH4 emission in paddy fields in the world, which was only about 30 Tg/yr and was 6% of all CH4 sources, and which also showed a decreasing annual trend. This founding proved that CH4 emission in paddy fields was not the main reason for the increase of CH4 in the atmosphere, and could be neglected with regard to global warming. The results were quite meaningful to Chinese, Asian, and even the world’s food production, and brought about a huge international response.
  
  
• China-Japan sand/dust observation project
  “The study of the formation and transportation mechanisms of wind-blown sand/dust and their influence on climate and environment” project is an important scientific cooperation between the Chinese and Japanese governments in recent years. This research will use a sand/dust transportation model as well as a climate model to quantitatively evaluate the transported sand amount in the atmosphere and ocean and their influence on the climate. The successful implementation of the project will help clarify the sign of the impact of natural wind-transported sand/dust on global warming and their global distribution and amplitude. The large amount of high resolution in situ observation data can be used to improve the retrieval methods through satellite data to identify sand/dust distribution. The research can also provide a scientific basis to improve Chinese sand/dust storm alarms and forecast abilities as well as the betterment of sand sources to prevent sand/dust diffusion. This two-country project will provide a good basis for multiple-country cooperations on sand/dust storm studies in the future.
  
  
• China-Thailand cooperative research
  IAP has had eight successful years of cooperation with Thailand in the research of typhoons, rainstorms and numerical simulation. The year 2001 saw the implementation of a three-year cooperative program entitled “flood related monsoon and rainstorm inspection and forecast technology research” between China and Thailand, sanctified by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The program focused on the detection of flood related monsoons and rainstorms and forecast technology, specifically in the areas of the Yangtze River Basin and the Mae Nam Chao Phraya River Basin. With both country’s efforts, remote sensing technology and data, computer models and other advanced measurements, and numerical models with rather complete physics, the research can make more obvious improvements in the forecasts and studies of the climate of the two river systems.
  
  
• Asian Regional Model Intercomparison Project (RMIP)
  In 2000, START-TEA organized and took charge of the Asian Regional Model Intercomparison Project (RMIP), which was the first international model intercomparison program organized by Chinese scientists. There were ten regional model development groups attending this program, which indicated that Chinese scientists took a great step from merely attending an international model program to organizing the same, and this improved our scientist’s international status in the global change research field.

• International project of the Asian Monsoon Global Variation Regional Ensemble Research Program
  In 2003, the international Earth System Science Companion Program (ESSP) began a 10-year “Asian Monsoon Global Variation Regional Ensemble Research Program” and set up the international project office at IAP. The main aim for this program is to recognize the source of the global change related to the Asian monsoon, its influence and relation to global scale problems as well as the corresponding countermeasures through regional ensemble instruments. This is the first time for a developing country to take charge of such a huge international cooperative research program, which has a far-reaching meaning for China. The program can improve China’s status in the international scientific community, verify the ability of Chinese scientists to command important international cooperative research, and recruit some overseas Chinese researchers to contribute to the implementation of the program, including the recruitment of some excellent foreign scientists. All of the above will surely further the international Asian monsoon ensemble research and improve Chinese scientist’s influence in the international monsoon research field (and even in the global change field). At the same time, the scientific research results are sure to provide scientific and technological bases for Chinese social and economic development.
  IAP will further promote international collaboration through international projects, academic communication, transferring and fostering of talent, construction of joint research centers, joining international scientific plans and publishing results in international journals. The international communication and collaboration will be seen as the turning point, more will be learned from abroad, and more advanced administration methods will be used to promote the institute’s research ability for independent innovation.