March 17, 2015 — The president of the International Council for Science (ICSU), Dr. Gordon McBean, is one of many highly anticipated speakers attending the International Geographical Union (IGU) regional conference in Moscow on 17-21 August.
Gordon McBean is known within the international science community as a distinguished scholar in the fields of meteorology, climatology and disaster mitigation. He was part of the team that won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for research on climate change, and he is a longstanding contributor to the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). He succeeded Dr. Yuan Tseh Lee as president of the ICSU in 2011.
McBean’s studies began at the University of British Columbia, where he earned his baccalaureate in physics and his doctorate in oceanography. He is now a professor at the University of Western Ontario and a member of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Meteorological Society and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. His research interests range broadly from natural to political sciences. He is currently studying extreme weather conditions, their impact on society and strategies for adapting to climate change. His work also includes assessment of environmental forecasting systems as well as participation in a research programme on climate change and its consequences in the coastal zone of the Canadian Arctic.
The activity of Dr. McBean is not limited to scientific research, and he is well known in the political sphere as well. For several years he served as an assistant deputy minister for Environment Canada. He is now co-director of the Centre for Environment and Sustainability. With a strong conviction that science and governance should be closely linked, he views climate change forecasting and averting natural disaster as essential to national security.
The ICSU is a nongovernmental organisation with a global membership that consists of national scientific bodies (121 members representing 141 countries) and international scientific unions (31 participants). It mobilises the scientific community’s knowledge and other resources to promote international scholarship for the benefit of society.
AUXILIARY INFORMATION:
The IGU conference “Geography, Culture and Society for Our Future Earth” will take place at Lomonosov Moscow State University (LMSU) on 17-21 August 2015. There are currently 2,000 registered participants. It is organised and managed by the LMSU Department of Geography, the Russian Geographical Society, the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Geography, and the National Committee of Russian Geographers.
Website:
http://www.igu2015.ru
