The long-term goal of the CDHC is to generate a nationally and internationally recognized center of excellence in hydrometeorology and climate. More specific objectives contributing to this goal include the following:
The CDHC facilitates interdisciplinary interactions among researchers at different UA units and from other institutions to promote innovation and generate synergy, and to coordinate multi-investigator joint proposals.
The CDHC continues to proactively pursue Earth science suborbital and satellite missions. UA won the $30M five-year NASA Earth Venture-Suborbital Mission (ACTIVATE) to study cloud-aerosol interactions over the Western Atlantic in 2018 (PI: Armin Sorooshian; deputy PI: Xubin Zeng). Several UA scientists are Co-Investigators of various satellite missions. The next target is to win a satellite mission as the PI organization.
The CDHC continues to pursue a cooperative institute with federal agencies and major interdisciplinary projects. This type of funding involves a substantial research amount and becomes extremely competitive. Careful coordination and detailed planning ahead of time are the key for success.
As a grassroots organization, CDHC will collaborate with various entities at the UA (such as the Arizona Institute for Resilience: Solutions for the Environment and Society (AIR) and Biosphere 2) to translate research findings in climate and hydrometeorology into syntheses useful for stakeholders. The CDHC also serves as a conduit to its members for conveying stakeholder needs directly to researchers, putting stakeholders in touch with individual researchers whose expertise matches their concerns, and otherwise making forefront climate and hydrometeorological science most useful for societal concerns. Several CDHC members have extensive experience in this area already.