Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites - North Carolina Information

The Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS) is formed through a consortium of academic, non-profit and community organizations with leadership from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and North Carolina State University (NCSU) on behalf of the University of North Carolina (UNC) System. The host institutions for CICS-MD and CICS-NC are UMCP and NCSU, respectively. CICS provides foci for collaborative research and associated activities in support of NOAA mission goals related to meteorological satellite and climate data and information research and development. The broad CICS consortium constitutes a first step toward the implementation of an academic infrastructure needed to support a national climate service. CICS scientific vision centers on observation from Earth-orbiting satellites and prediction using realistic mathematical models of the present and future behavior of the Earth System. In this context, observations include the development of new ways to use existing observations, the invention of new methods of observation, and the creation and application of ways to synthesize observations from many sources into a complete and coherent depiction of the full system. Toward this vision central to NOAA Goals, CICS conducts collaborative research with NOAA scientists in three principal Themes: Climate and Satellite Research and Applications, Climate and Satellite Observations and Monitoring, and Climate Research and Modeling.