CliC’s parent organization, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), was established over 30 years ago (in 1980), under the joint sponsorship of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) , and, since 1993, has also been sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC of UNESCO).
CliC is one of 4 core project of WCRP. In this section, learn more about our sister projects, sponsors, and more. Check out upcoming WCRP events and find out what has been happening lately.
We are very proud and happy to announce that Stephen Griffies (NOAA/GFDL), SSG member and former long term WGOMD member and Chair, has been awarded the 2014 EGU Fridtjof Nansen Medal for his outstanding contribution and leadership in ocean general circulation model development and critical insights in the physical nature and parameterisation of ocean processes.
The 2nd International Ocean Research Conference (IORC) will be held next 17-21 November 2014 in Barcelona (Spain). This Conference is an opportunity for the scientific community to come together to plan the coming decade of international collaboration in marine science and technology, with a view to improving ocean governance.
The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has set a new milestone by establishing the International CLIVAR Global Project Office (ICGPO) at the First Institute of Oceanography (FIO) of the State Oceanographic Administration (SOA) in the lovely seaside city of Qingdao, China. This is the first time China hosts a WCRP international project office.
Professor Tim Palmer, former co-chair of CLIVAR SSG, has been honoured in this year's Institute of Physics Awards for the development of probabilistic weather and climate prediction systems. Awarding Professor Palmer the Dirac Medal 2014, which recognises outstanding contributions in theoretical physics, is a recognition of the importance of the fields of weather and climate for all sections of society... read more
Future Earth will have a new secretariat with a unique and innovative structure that spans three continents. The preferred bidders comprises five global hubs which will function as a single entity, and are located in Canada, France, Japan, Sweden and United States. This includes a series of regional hubs, from which it is expected new regional networks will develop, these covers, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Asia. The secretariat will support five core functions: coordination, communication and outreach, research enabling, capacity building, synthesis and foresight... read more
Dr. Ghassem Asrar, former WCRP Director, has been named a 2014 Ambassador for the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in recognition for "outstanding contributions to societal impact, service to Earth and space community, scientific leadership and promotion of talent/career pool. " The Award honors up to five outstanding scientific leaders per year... read more
The goal of this theme is to improve understanding of atmospheric circulation and its role on climate variability and climate change in the Southern Hemisphere. Many of the current pressing scientific questions involve the response of the atmospheric circulation to ozone depletion/recovery and greenhouse-gas increases, and how this impacts surface climate, ocean circulation, sea ice, and ice shelves. These interactions have implications for carbon and heat uptake and the stability of ice sheets. We need to understand the observed relationships and how they are represented in models, in order to improve decadal prediction and longer term projections of Antarctic climate. Recent studies suggest that the zonal and non-zonal circulation influence the climate system of the high latitude Southern Hemisphere. This influence may be reflected in the variability in Antarctic sea ice extent as well as the climate over the Antarctic continent. Activities associated with this theme could examine the coupling between the larger scale atmospheric circulation and the climate system of the Southern Hemisphere, especially with regard to how the southern jets and the non-zonal circulation couple to the rest of the system (ocean, sea ice and land ice). These activities may include but are not limited to, theoretical, observational and modeling studies on the vertically coupled processes.
This theme, focusing on model error, will initially concentrate on two goals: (a) to determine what processes in GCMs contribute most to error growth on hourly to seasonal time scales and seasonal to interannual time scales in the polar regions, and (b) to develop observational and modelling strategies to improve these processes. The current understanding is that the processes contributing to model error are the same over all these timescales when focusing on the atmosphere, ocean and sea-ice physics.
The goal of theme 4 is to perform comprehensive evaluation coupled models in the polar regions. This assessment of model performance must go beyond identifying model biases against trusted observational benchmarks and quantifying inter-model spread. The activities within this theme must ask "Why" questions to assess model performance. Why do models behave in a different ways? Why do they or don't they match observations? Answering "why" questions requires understanding important climate forcings and feedbacks and their process representation in models. This theme seeks to mitigate problems that arise from the frequent disconnect between model development and model evaluation timescales and barriers from limited personnel. As a result, a process-level link between model evaluation and improvement is a backbone of this initiative. Model evaluation and improvement should address the mean climate state but also changes in response to internal variability and external forcing.
The goal of theme 3 is to coordinate research that investigates the physical mechanisms that give rise to polar climate predictability on seasonal to multi-decadal timescales. The intent is to ascertain the potential for improving the actual skill of operational climate predictions for polar regions. The participants of this group will coordinate and collaborate with operational forecasters wherever possible. An important focus would be the impacts of polar variability on lower latitudes, for which there is growing evidence. This theme aims to apply understanding of the system gained through investigating seasonal to decadal prediction to guide observational network design and deepen our understanding of longer timescales and validate and/or improve models for all timescales.