The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) had their 35th annual Joint Science Committee meeting from 30 June to 4 July in Heidelberg, Germany. The CliC community was well represented (see photo). The meeting created a relaxed atmosphere where the new WCRP Director David Carlson was introduced to the group and was able to hear about the great things that are happening within CliC and WCRP. The meeting also provided a unique opportunity for several of the CliC leaders to meet with other WCRP activity leads to discuss ways to better collaborate and increase our understanding of the cryosphere’s interactions with climate.
Greg Flato, CliC’s co-chair, and Ted Shepherd (PCPI co-lead) gave great presentations on our activities. The presentations are available at the links below and the summaries follow:
CliC: Climate and Cryosphere, by Greg Flato, CliC Co-Chair
Summary:
The WCRP Climate and Cryosphere core project had a productive year, with the launch of several targeted activities, the support of many workshops and meeting, the implementation of the Grand Challenge, “Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, and ongoing outreach and communication. A focus over the past two years has been on building connections to the global and regional climate modelling community, and this is being facilitated through the development of several model intercomparison activities (feeding into the WGCM’s Coupled Model Intercomparison Project), and a new forum on sea-ice and climate modelling. Of course, observations of the cryosphere, and the assembly of datasets suitable for model evaluation and process studies remain important, as is the need to ensure connections with other WCRP core projects and working groups.
Grand Challenge: The Cryosphere in a Changing Climate by Greg Flato, CliC Co-Chair
Summary:
The WCRP Grand Challenge, “Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, is one of the key activities that CliC will be pursuing over the coming few years. Because this Grand Challenge topic is so closely aligned with the core mandate of CliC, it is being integrated directly into the planning of our targeted activities and organizational structure. An important focus in the near term is on improving the representation of the cryosphere in global and regional climate models, and facilitating more comprehensive evaluation of cryospheric model components. This will involve more direct involvement in the WGCM’s planning of the next phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), and a need to organize suitable observational datasets for model evaluation. The Polar Climate Predicatability Initiative (PCPI), which is co-led by SPARC and CliC, also constitutes an important aspect of the Grand Challenge. It should also be noted that CliC will contribute to other WCRP Grand Challenges, particularly the Grand Challenge on Sea-Level Rise for which CliC will coordinate activities related to the cryosphere’s contributions to sea-level.
WCRP Polar Climate Predictability Initiative (PCPI) by Ted Shepherd, PCPI co-lead
Summary:
The Polar Climate Predictability Initiative (PCPI) is a component of the WCRP’s “Cryosphere in a Changing Climate” Grand Challenge. It grew out of a WCRP workshop in Bergen in October 2010 is jointly led by CliC and SPARC. The PCPI has identified six initiatives, three of which are joint with the WWRP’s Polar Prediction Project, covering activities ranging from historical data to model error. The first meeting of all the initiative leads was held in Boulder in April 2014, and various activities are in various stages of development. Details are provided in the presentation. Anyone interested in participating should feel free to contact the initiative leads.