This workshop will explore the contributions that software research can make to the challenge of tackling climate change. Software is a critical enabling technology in nearly all aspects of climate change, from the computational models used by climate scientists to improve our understanding of the impact of human activities on earth systems, through to the information and control systems needed to build an effective carbon-neutral society. The intent of the workshop is to explore how software research can contribute to this challenge, to build a community of researchers interested in responding to the challenge, and to map out a research agenda.

The workshop will build on two previous events: The Software Engineering for the Planet sessions held at ICSE'09, and the 1st Workshop on Software Research and Climate Change held at Oopsla/Onward! in October 2009.

Climate change is likely to be the defining issue of the 21st Century. Recent studies indicate that climate change is accelerating, confirming the more pessimistic of scenarios identified by climate scientists. Our past use of fossil fuels commit the world to around 2°C average temperature rise since the pre-industrial era, and, unless urgent and drastic cuts are made, further heating is likely to trigger any of a number of climate change tipping points. The results will be a dramatic reduction of food production and water supplies, more extreme weather events, the spread of disease, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and mass extinctions. We are faced with the twin challenges of mitigation (avoiding the worst climate change effects by rapidly transitioning the world to a low-carbon economy) and adaptation (re-engineering the infrastructure of modern society so that we can survive and flourish on a hotter planet). [See Links for more info]

These challenges are global in nature, and pervade all aspects of society. To address them, we will need researchers, engineers, policymakers, and educators from many different disciplines to come the the table and ask what they can contribute. There are both short term challenges (such as how to deploy, as rapidly as possible, existing technology to produce renewable energy; how to design government policies and international treaties to bring greenhouse gas emissions under control) and long term challenges (such as how to complete the transition to a global carbon-neutral society by the latter half of this century). In nearly all these challenges, software has a major role to play as a critical enabling technology.

So, for the software research community, we can frame the challenge as follows: How can we, as experts in software technology, and as the creators of future software tools and techniques, apply our particular knowledge and experience to the challenge of climate change? How can we understand and exploit the particular intellectual assets of our community — our ability to:

• think computationally;
• understand and model complex inter-related systems;
• build useful abstractions and problem decompositions;
• manage and evolve large-scale socio-technical design efforts;
• build the information systems and knowledge management tools that empower effective decision-making;
• develop and verify complex control systems on which we now depend;
• create user-friendly and task-appropriate interfaces to complex information and communication infrastructures.

In short, how can we apply our research strengths to make significant contributions to the problems of mitigation and adaptation of climate change?

The goals of the workshop are to develop a community of researchers actively engaged in this challenge, and to flesh out a detailed research agenda that leverages existing research ideas and capabilities.