James W. Hansen Theme Leader Program Management Committee Member Theme 2: Adaptation through Managing Climate Risk Dr. James Hansen holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Biological Engineering from the University of Florida, and an M.S. in Agronomy and Soil Science and B.S. in General Tropical Agriculture from the University of Hawaii. He has worked on managing climate-related risk for agriculture and food security since 1996 – first at the University of Florida where he was part of the Southeast Climate Consortium, then since 1999 in his present position as a Research Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). His current research emphasizes: the economics of risk and advance information in agriculture; design and communication of climate information for smallholder farmers; and modeling interactions between climate and agriculture. Hansen’s research contributions include valuation of climate information, farm economic risk and sustainability analysis, land use under conflicting goals, spatial scaling in agroecosystem modeling, stochastic weather modeling, climate-informed crop forecasting, tropical soil fertility, and multiple cropping systems ecology. Hansen served on the Leadership Group that developed the successful CCAFS proposal. Other significant professional contributions include serving on the team that coordinated and reported the multi-stakeholder Gap Analysis for the Implementation of the Global Climate Observing System Programme in Africa which contributed to development of the ClimDev-Africa program of the AU, UN-ECA and AfDB; the International Review Team for Australia’s Managing Climate Variability R&D Program; and the Steering Group for the international Climate Prediction and Agriculture (CLIMAG) Program of ESSP. He served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Agricultural Systems (2002-2010). Some recent publications Hansen, J.W., Mishra, A., Rao, K.P.C., Indeje, M., Ngugi, R.K., 2009. Potential value of GCM-based seasonal rainfall forecasts for maize management in semi-arid Kenya. Agricultural Systems 101:80-90. Mishra, A., Hansen, J.W., Dingkuhn, M., Baron, C., Traoré, S.B., Ndiaye, O., Ward, M.N., 2008. Sorghum yield prediction from seasonal rainfall forecasts in Burkina Faso. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 148:1798-1814. Meza, F.J., Hansen, J.W., Osgood, D., 2008. Economic value of seasonal climate forecasts for agriculture: review of ex‑ante assessments and recommendations for future research. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 47:1269-1286. Barrett, C.B., Barnett, B.J. Carter, M.R., Chantarat, S., Hansen, J.W., Mude, A.G., Osgood, D.E., Skees, J.R., Turvey, C.G., Ward, M.N., 2007. Poverty Traps and Climate Risk: Limitations and Opportunities of Index-Based Risk Financing. IRI Tech. Rep. No. 07-03. International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Palisades, New York, USA. (Commissioned background paper for the IRI Policy Roundtable on Climate Risk, Poverty Traps and Index-Based Financing) Hansen, J.W., Baethgen, W., Osgood, D., Ceccato, P., Ngugi, R.K., 2007. Innovations in climate risk management: protecting and building rural livelihoods in a variable and changing climate. Journal of Semi-Arid Tropical Agricultural Research 4(1). (published online at icrisat.org/Journal/specialproject.htm).
Posted on: Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11:46:14 +0000