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1st International Satellite Snow Products Intercomparison workshop (ISSPI)

Monday, 21 July 2014 to Wednesday, 23 July 2014
College Park, Maryland, USA

http://calvalportal.ceos.org/projects/snowpex

The workshop is organised by the ESA SnowPEX Project in cooperation with NOAA / NASA, and supported by the WMO / Global Cryosphere Watch (GCW) and the WRCP / CliC.

Seasonal snow is a main element of the global water cycle and climate system. Due to the strong influence on the radiation and energy balance, changes in snow extent tend to amplify climate fluctuations. Terrestrial snow covers up to 50 million km2 of the Northern Hemisphere in winter, and is characterized by high spatial and temporal variability. Therefore satellite observations provide the only means for timely and complete observations of the global snow cover. The recently published 2013 IPCC Working Group 1 report identified seasonal snow as significantly decreasing during recent decades. The importance of producing better global scale snow cover data sets has been addressed in the WCRP-CliC Workshop on “WCRP Grand Challenges of the Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, held in Tromsø, 16-18 Oct. 2013. Also in the WMO Global Cryosphere Watch Workshop in January 2013 the need of intercomparing snow products from various sensors and methods was identified. This is the first of two international workshops with the aim to bring together scientists and institutions working in seasonal snow pack monitoring in order to assess the quality of current satellite-based snow products derived from EO data and work out guidelines for improvement. Scientists are encouraged to submit abstracts for presentations and posters for the workshops.

This is the first of two international workshops with the aim to bring together scientists and institutions working in seasonal snow pack monitoring in order to assess the quality of current satellite-based snow products derived from EO data and work out guidelines for improvement. Scientists are encouraged to submit abstracts for presentations and posters for the workshops.

Abstract submission and registration deadline is 15 May 2014

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Meetings

PCPI Meeting at the 27th IUGG General Assembly 11 July 2019Montreal, CanadaAttendees: Julie Jones, Gareth Marshall, Alexandra JahnAgenda: Follow-up discussion…

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6: Improve understanding of how jets and non-zonal circulation couple to the rest of the system in the Southern Hemisphere

Co-leads: Marilyn Raphael (UCLA, USA) and Gareth Marshall (British Antarctic Survey, UK)

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.

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5: Model error

Co-leads: Gunilla Svensson (Stockholm University, Sweden) and Markus Jochum (University of Copenhagen, Denmark).

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.

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