Improving our understanding of the Earth´s complex climate phenomena, such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), has a huge economic and social impact for present and future generations, and can underpin advances in areas as diverse as energy, environment, agricultural and marine sciences. Given the complexity of the inter-relations between the subsystems that constitute our climate, it is important to approach the problem from an interdisciplinary perspective. However,there is a great shortage of qualified workforce to perform this task and a major challenge is the education and training of young qualified researchers that can approach climate phenomena from a complex systems point of view. 

This requires knowledge from several fields such as physics, dynamical systems theory and computer science, and also requires a detailed understanding of Earth sciences such as meteorology and oceanography. There is also a clear need for improving the coordination and cooperation of the research teams working on these issues.

• dr. ir. Q. (Qingyi) Feng