models. Before joining Duke in 2001, he was at Rutgers University, where he started his academic career in 1989. Dr. Avissar served as editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research—Climate and Physics of the Atmosphere. Dr. Avissar has served on various national and international panels and committees including the NRC’s Committee on Hydrologic Science. He currently serves as the project scientist for the hydrometeorology component of the Large-scale Biosphere Atmosphere (LBA) Experiment in the Amazon and is the chairman of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) Global Water Cycle Science Steering Group.

Dr. Gerard C. Bond is a Doherty senior scholar at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, New York. Since 1980 he has been working on the history of the Earth’s climate, mainly from the present through the previous interglaciation. His research interests have included the origin of Heinrich events, Dansgaard/Oeschger cycles, and the persistent 1500-year climate cycle. He is currently working on abrupt climate change within interglacial climates—particularly our present interglacial, or Holocene—and on how the Sun impacts the Earth’s climate system. Dr. Bond is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the recipient of the 2003 Maurice Ewing Medal. Dr. Bond received his Ph.D. in geology with minors in marine geology and geochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Dr. Stuart Gaffin is an associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research. Previously, he was a senior scientist for the Global and Regional Atmospheric Program at Environmental Defense (formerly EDF). Dr. Gaffin’s research focuses on emissions scenarios for greenhouse gases over the next century. He served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. He was a consulting scientist with the World Commission on Dams and focused on quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from flooded vegetation in dam reservoirs in the tropics of Brazil. Currently, Dr. Gaffin is specializing in the nexus between climate change, population and development, and environmental sustainability. Dr. Gaffin received his Ph.D. in climatology and geophysics from New York University’s Earth Systems Group.

Dr. Jeffrey T. Kiehl is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR’s) Climate Change and Research Section. This section applies the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) to past, present, and future climate change. Dr. Kiehl has carried out research on the effects of ozone depletion on Earth’s climate, the role of clouds in the climate system, and the role of aerosol particles in the climate system. For