This page's content is no longer actively maintained, but the material has been kept on-line for historical purposes.
The page may contain broken links or outdated information, and parts may not function in current web browsers.

Project Plans

Project Plans: 2002

This year is the 9th Summer Institute on Climate and Planets at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. ICP gives students and teachers an opportunity to see how science really works by contributing to GISS research teams' along-side scientists.

ICP research can lead to new knowledge needed to understand the effect of humans and nature on Earth's climate. It can help make climate change predictions or provide analysis that leads to improvements in GISS atmospheric and ocean models used to predict future climate. It produces scientifically objective information that may help policy-makers address climate change, air pollution or human health policy issues.

There are 58 student and teacher research fellows joining seven GISS climate research team and an education project team. 2002 ICP Research Fellows represent 33 junior highs, high schools, community colleges and senior colleges in the Metropolitan area, as well as two universities outside the U.S.

Each year we select a theme for the ICP Summer Institute that is relevant to all the research teams. Our theme this year is The Butterfly Effect. This is the idea that if a butterfly flapped its wings in Peking today it might influence storm systems in New York next month (Gleick 1987).

Climate is a large, complex system comprised of many human and natural processes -- physical, chemical, biological. Scientists understand a great deal about the inner workings of these processes and their interactions that help them study and predict climate change. However, they also came to believe that Earth's climate system is influenced by natural variability or chaotic and unpredictable occurrences.

The Butterfly Effect analogy reminds us that there are an unpredictable number of events, small and large, that occur in and affect Earth's climate. Keeping this in mind should lead to critical questions about our research results and a global perspective when we think about the world we live in.

2002 Projects