Climate Variability and Change in Southern South America: Focus on the La Plata Basin

This book discusses regional climate variability and change, with a focus on the La Plata Basin (LBP) region, and its applications for societal benefits. Written for an audience of non-climate scientists, the book aims to connect recent advances in regional climate understanding and prediction with practical guidance for decision makers. The book is oriented towards researchers, students, and technicians in disciplines that apply climate knowledge to environment-related contexts and sectors. Only a basic level of physics and mathematics is required. 

The book has three major goals, which are addressed across five chapters. The first goal is to describe the behavior of regional climate on different timescales, including variability and change, using simple conceptual models. The second goal is to provide updated information about the predictability of climate variability and current predictive skill within the LPB. The third goal is to discuss the concept of "climate services" and how information from these services can be used to aid in decision-making. Readers will learn how climate information should be applied to maximize value, including how to interpret probabilities and manage uncertainties.

Carolina S. Vera is Emeritus Professor at the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and Principal Researcher at the Argentine National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). Prof. Vera has extensive experience in research, teaching, and advising on the understanding, simulation, and prediction of climate variability and change, and their impacts on socioeconomic sectors and natural ecosystems in southern South America, with a particular focus on both the southern Andes and southeastern South America. She is among the most highly cited researchers in these topics. In 2020, she was honored by the American Meteorological Society with the Cleveland Abbe Award “for unselfish devotion to advancing and communicating climate science to decision makers and stakeholders in South America and across the world.”

Prof. Vera has held leading roles at numerous academic and scientific institutions in Argentina. She served as Director of the Center for Atmospheric and Ocean Research (CIMA/UBA-CONICET) and the Franco-Argentine Institute for Climate Studies and its Impacts (IFAECI), jointly supported by UBA, CONICET, IRD, and CNRS. She was also Deputy Dean of the School of Sciences at UBA and Chief of Staff at Argentina’s former Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Internationally, Prof. Vera served as Vice-Chair of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its Sixth Assessment Cycle and was Co-Coordinator of SISSA, the Drought Information System for Southern South America, under the Regional Climate Center for Southern South America of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Prof. Vera has contributed to various international scientific panels, including the WMO Scientific Advisory Panel, the Future Earth Science Committee, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI), the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Scientific Committee of the Transformations to Sustainability Program of the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the Committee on Meteorology and Oceanography of the Southern Hemisphere of the American Meteorological Society. She is currently a member of the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). 

Ileana Bladé received her Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington. She is currently a full professor at the School of Physics of the University of Barcelona, where she has taught meteorology, atmospheric dynamics, and climate physics, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, since 2002. Her research focuses on low-frequency atmospheric variability and teleconnections, with a particular emphasis on their influence on rainfall variability and change. She has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications on the dynamics of atmospheric circulation and precipitation change across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, using both observational data and climate model output. She co-chaired the CLIVAR-SPAIN steering committee from 2009 to 2013 and has served on the MEDCLIVAR steering committee since 2012. 

Brant Liebmann is retired from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder. He has authored or co-authored many peer-reviewed publications about atmospheric processes affecting the meteorology and climatology of South America, most with an emphasis on rainfall. The time scales of his interest range from weekly to climate change.