As everyone knows, climate change in recent decades has resulted in extreme weather and has caused tremendous impacts onto our society, including environmental damage, economic loss, societal instability, and so on. Learning from the lessons of Hurricane Katrina in the USA, Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan, flooding in southern Thailand, and heat waves and droughts in many regions of the globe, it is necessary for everyone on this earth to take the potential future risks more seriously, and focus more on the possible options for adaptation and mitigation.

As minister of MOST, the leading agency of science and technology promotion, I always have the sense of mission to encourage researchers in Taiwan to get more involved in this significant issue. The subject featured in the April issue highlights the state-of-the-art findings of the climate change research in Taiwan, including analytical models to predict future climate and tropical cyclone activity, high-performance computing to better simulate typhoon activity, the operation of an interdisciplinary platform for evaluating greenhouse gas effects on global warming and precipitation change as a result of global warming. By a series of distinguished scientific discoveries in Taiwan, I expect to invite experts around the world to take actions together to reduce climate change and prevent its future risks, and help government develop better climate policies towards sustainable development goals.