On Wednesday November 18th, Dr. Melissa A. Kenney, who is an Assistant Research Professor at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland,presented her research on global climate change indicators. Her talk, entitled “Indicators: Are They Useful for Decision-Making”, outlined Dr. Kenney’s  in-progress research project, which looks at the usefulness of indicators to help non-scientific audiences better understand the science of climate change, and builds on her broader research interests surrounding how to integrate both scientific knowledge and societal values into policy decision-making.   
Kenney defines an indicator as “a regularly updated representation of status, rates of change, or trends of a phenomenon using measured data, modeled data, or an index to assess or advance scientific understanding, to communicate, to inform decision-making, and/or to denote progress in achieving management objectives”. Indicators such as GDP and Unemployment Indices are used to assess a country/state/county/etc.’s economic well-being;  Kenney’s project explores if similar models of assessment could be used to better understand  environmental well-being, and particularly global climate change.