Climate Hazards Center Partnerships & Affiliates
The Climate Hazards Center is a 19-year-old alliance of multidisciplinary scientists and food security analysts from the UC Santa Barbara Geography Department, Africa, and Latin America working alongside partners in the US Geological Survey (USGS), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). This cooperative is unique in its high potential for high-profile international outreach, which includes collaborations with organizations like The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), AGRHYMET Regional Centre, IGAD Climate Predicition and Applications Centre (ICPAC), the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) Climate Services (CSC), and the World Food Programme (WFP).
Climate Hazards Center Origin
In 1985, in the wake of record famine across east Africa, FEWS NET was created by USGS and USAID to provide advance warning of potential famine events while collecting data to support humanitarian response programs. In 2003, in close collaboration with the US Geological Survey Earth Recources Observation and Science Center (USGS EROS), the Climate Hazards Group (now the Climate Hazards Center) was founded to provide further support to FEWS NET and its goal of protecting the world's most vulnerable regions and inhabitants.
Critical Research & Timely Action: UCSB Team and Field Scientists
The UC Santa Barbara team conducts critical climate science research, which is shared with CHC field scientists who then communicate information with key decision-makers, often serving as the vital link between climate crisis and timely humanitarian aid.
Decision Support & Capacity Building: CHC's Unique Mission
The CHC’s unique mission lies in decision support and capacity-building. While decision support takes many forms, the CHC focuses primary on drought early warning, famine prevention, climate prediction, and climate adaptation. The CHC’s ultimate goal, which is consistently met, is to support environmental decision making, fisheries management, and sustainable development while reducing and monitoring climate-induced impacts. Our outreach component focuses on empowering scientists and decision-makers, in the U.S. and developing countries, to monitor, predict, prepare for, and respond to climate extremes.
Read more about CHC in Science's "The Hunger Forecast: How a team of scientists studying drought helped build the world's leading famine prediction model."