Ivan Ramirez

	Ivan in his office at NCAR.

During the summer of 2006, Ivan J. Ramirez (visiting junior scientist from Columbia University, originally from Ecuador) along with Dr. Lino Naranjo Diaz (MeteoGalicia, Spain) and Dr. Elsa Galarza (Universidad del Pacífico, Peru), and under the guidance of Dr. Michael H. Glantz, developed an El Niño Affairs program that attempts to enhance institutional, community, and individual capacities in Latin American populations to better understand and respond to extreme weather events related to El Niño and La Niña. Its goal is to educate the educators and trainers at universities and foster "climate, water and weather" activities from the high school to the pre-PhD levels. "El Niño knowledge" is a valuable source of information to the public, government, and business people in Latin America, which is at the "Ground Zero" of ENSO impacts.

Mr. Ramirez assembled Spanish and Portuguese-language materials (peer-reviewed articles, grey literature, books, governmental and non-governmental organization reports, and images) and compiled a selective and comprehensive, annotated bibliography related to important El Niño topics that encompass science, ecology, economics, health, history, law, and ethics. He translated and reviewed documents and El Niño graphics from English to Spanish. Another aspect of Mr. Ramirez's contribution was to help develop and design a support webpage for El Niño Affairs that visually represents the project's vision and objectives. In July, Mr. Ramirez attended the Living with Climate Variability and Change conference in Finland (sponsored by the WMO and IRI) and presented an El Niño Affairs poster and served as a supporting rapporteur on the decision-making panel.

Mr. Ramirez believes this type of development effort is necessary and helps to address some of the ethical issues that arise from El Niño, climate change, and natural disaster related events. "It is important to not only present the information in the language of the people of Latin America , but also to present knowledge by Latin Americans for Latin Americans."

Mr. Ramirez is currently a remote research associate for the CCB. He continues to develop the El Niño Affairs website and assist Dr. Glantz on a publication that compares and contrasts country responses to the 1997-98 El Niño. He is also preparing El Niño Affairs poster presentations for several upcoming conferences next year.

Mr. Ramirez is a recent graduate of the Climate and Society Masters program at Columbia University and is a first-year PhD student in the Geography Department at Michigan State University, where he is focusing on El Niño, climate change and health impacts.

Funding Sources

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation with additional funding provided by the SERE Lab Visitor Program.