Brief Introduction

Jointly founded by IAP, the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Peking University, the University of Bergen, and the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research, the international research organization NZC was formally established at IAP in November, 2003. This establishment aimed at the realization of mutual penetration between environmental and atmospheric sciences. The strategic orientation of NZC is to build a research base with strong and continuous innovation, becoming an influential research and training center in the world. The scientific programming focuses on the past, present and future climate change, especially the climate teleconnection between high and low latitudes. As an all-around research center, NZC’s scientific research covers the main fields and orientations of climate and environment changes. Each funding partner regards the education and mutual dispatch of students (including Master’s and Ph.D. students and post doctoral fellows) as one of the core activities of NZC, and the aim is to cultivate highly competitive environment researchers for each partner.

NZC’s next-stage running size and mode will be determined after the three-year evaluation by scientific committee. The plan is to bring NZC forward to become a first-class, extensively attractive international level research center in the following five years, gradually extending its influence to the domestic and foreign academic world. The establishment of the center must play an important role in order for IAP to become a first-class international research institute. This was stated by Prof. Lu Yongxiang, the president of CAS, at the establishment of NZC: “I highly appreciate and actively support such important actions with a high [basis], high orientation and high level of international research. The establishment of the center indicates new results in the international cooperation and communication fields of CAS, which provides a new and important platform for international cooperation and communication work. The center can surely [contribute] to the scientific collaboration and communication [between] China and Norway as well as other European countries.”

Main Research Fields

1. Construction of past climate and climate variability based on low-and-high latitude paleo-environmental reconstructions from tree rings, marine and lake sediments, and by use of modeling
   
   
2. Development and evaluation of seasonal, inter-annual and decadal time scale climate predictability systems, and identification of low-and-high latitude teleconnection patterns and mechanisms
   
   
3. Model and assess long-term climate effects of regional to global scale atmospheric events like dust storms and pollution emissions

Establishment of Nansen-Zhu International Research Center on 4th, Nov. 2003

Director: Prof. Wang Huijun
Deputy Director: Prof. Wang Zifa