Climate Change is one of the most significant challenges facing humanity in the 21st century and beyond. The Andes are particularly vulnerable to climate change given their role as a ‘water towers’. In Argentina and Chile alone, more than 25 million people rely on water originating in the Andes. Yet, as noted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the current pace and scope of adaptation are insufficient and the IPCC therefore deemed the Andes as a ‘high risk’ region for livelihood and economies, due to projected future water scarcity.
At the same time, the Andes are also a unique scientific laboratory, extending over almost 9000 km from the tropics and subtropics to mid- and high-latitude climates with a profound impact on global hydroclimate and high-impact weather events, thereby providing a unique set of challenges for impacts analysis and adaptation. Reducing the uncertainty surrounding future climate change impacts in the Andes, therefore, constitutes a major scientific challenge, which demands a close collaboration among international networks focused on Andean climate change.
To address this challenge, we have created the ACCORD network of networks. The overarching goal of ACCORD is to build the first multidisciplinary network of networks focused on climate change across the Andes by leveraging transdisciplinary expertise of scientists from the largest international networks to produce scientific breakthroughs that have hitherto been elusive due to their interdisciplinary nature and international scope. ACCORD is funded by the NSF AccelNet program.
ACCORD will also contribute to training the next generation of scientists that are capable of addressing scientific grand challenges, by involving students and early career scientists in our project. They will be exposed to interdisciplinary research abroad, help organize an international online seminar series, and participate in international summer schools and a high- resolution climate modeling workshop.
ACCORD also plans to inform policy- and decision-makers, government agencies, stakeholders such as water managers, and the broader public about our research advances, by translating our model simulations into interactive online visualization tools.
