Summary for the start-up meeting of WMO/CCl ET2.2 on Climate monitoring including satellite and marine data and products

The start-up meeting of Commission of Climatology (CCl) expert team (ET2.2) on climate monitoring including satellite and marine data and products was held on 20-22nd September 2006, Tarragona, Spain. Some invited guests and experts: Pierre Bessemoulin, President of CCl, Tom Peterson, Chair of OPAG2, Manola Brunet-India, Co-chair of OPAG2, Hama Kontongomde, Scientific officer of CCl Secretariat, Prof. Mark D. Schwartz from University of Wisconsin, Prof. Randy Cerveny from Arizona State University, Prof. Enric Aguilar from University of Rovira I Virgil, Mr. Jose Antonio López from INM of Spain, together with six team members of ET2.2, took part in this meeting.

In the welcome session, Mr. Kontongomde expressed the high expectations from WMO members for the application of satellite and marine data sets in climate monitoring. Pierre Bessemoulin recognized to have the meeting early in the inter-session. Besides the already identified four top-level Terms of Reference to be prioritized for the work plan of ET2.2, he put forward another two key issues to be addressed, e.g. translation of the annual Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Statement of the Climate Article and the need for a training workshop for the capability building in developing countries. In addition, Pierre Bessemoulin suggested that the Et.2.2 can call on more experts to support the commission and look for project partners for the team activities.

In the session for overview on the status and issues of climate monitoring, 12 presentations were given and some options for ET2.2 actions were brought out based on the full discussion on each presentation.

Tom Peterson gave a talk on what a small group of volunteers can accomplish in climate monitoring. The strong points of the group would be international recognition for the global coordination and inspiration of local and regional activities, while some individuals may not follow through with their agreed-upon actions. So, the expert team is expected to identify actions that are important, doable, unlikely to be done without the ET Members and beyond what anyone of the Members acting alone without the WMO banner could do.

Jay Lawrimore from NOAA/NCDC overviewed climate monitoring activities in the United States and RA IV which include several major elements within the climate monitoring program, that is, state of the climate report, drought monitoring on a weekly basis, climate Impact Indicators, extremes monitoring and miscellaneous products.

Wan Hassan reported the status of climate monitoring in Malaysia, such as the observation network in Malaysia (36 stations in coastal areas), database management system, fire danger rating system, 10-day & monthly bulletin on weather and climate assessment, annual climate summary and air quality summary of Malaysia and some climate change signals detected in Malaysia. Urgent needs for new capability and shortcomings in climate monitoring in Malaysia include gaps (temporal and spatial) in data, quality of observations from volunteer stations, inadequate interoperability, inadequate user involvement, lack of processing systems to transform data into climate indicators, better AWS systems, applications facility in radar and satellite system, etc.

Xiaolan Wang introduced each element of Canadian climate monitoring networks which consist of reference climate station network, surface weather network, volunteer climate (Temp. & Precip.) network, partner stations, Doppler radar network, moored and drifting Buoys and upper air radiosonde network. Some climate monitoring products, drought monitoring, climate trends and variations bulletin, climate extremes, plots of daily extremes (mean, max, min, climate normal etc), monthly update climate and storm summaries etc. were also presented.

Rainer Hollmann presented achievements and future plan of the European climate monitoring with satellite. Currently, the EUMETSAT’s Satellite Application Facility (SAF) has been established in ocean & sea ice monitoring，support to nowcasting and very short range forecasting, Climate monitoring, numerical weather prediction, land surface analysis, ozone monitoring, support to operational hydrology and water management, and Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for atmospheric sounding. Particularly, relevant products of climate monitoring SAF were introduced and their potential usage and caveats were discussed. Visiting Scientist program of the SAF network may be a potential chance for CCl ET2.2 to collaborate with the international climate community. Rainer Hollmann also provided the latest information on European plans for the Continued Development and Operations Phase (CDOP, 2007–2012) and proposed the requirements of climate monitoring for future satellite missions.

Zuqiang Zhang gave an overview on the current activities in climate monitoring in China which involved some essential variables or events in atmosphere, oceanosphere, cryosphere, petrosphere, biosphere and the effect of human activities. The operational drought monitoring system, some attempts for climate extreme monitoring, and application of satellite data in climate monitoring in China were specially shown as a response to the decided priorities for the work of ET2.2. Some urgent needs for capability building, for instance, the application of satellite data in ocean data assimilation system, were proposed. This talk ended with the latest progress on efforts of China Meteorological Administration to build its national climate observatory network.

Craig Donlon talked in detail about advantages and issues for satellite and marine data and products in climate monitoring, with special focus on the observations on SST, ocean biology, sea level and sea ice. His talk also involved the GCOS climate monitoring principles on satellite application.

A brief overview on components of a regional climate monitoring in WMO RAVI were brought by Rainer Hollmann, including the annual bulletin on the climate in WMO region RAVI, generate climate monitoring products and its successor platform, and WMO Regional Climate Center’s functions on climate monitoring.

Jose Antonio Lopez Diaz viewed the basic climate monitoring products in Spain, which include monthly climate bulletin, daily reports on the broken records, hydrological reports and reports on climatological unusual events.

Mark Schwratz addressed the importance of phenological monitoring, the status of global phenological monitoring and relevant issues (few networks, multiple standards, and little coordination), benefits of phenological applications in co-location and coordination with climate data. At the end of this talk, the vision of a USA National Phenology Network was introduced.

The final two presentations were related to the monitoring on climate extremes. Jay Lawrimore reported recent activities related to verification of extremes in the United States via the National Climate Extremes Committee (NCEC). The main points of this talk were background and procedures of the NCEC, some existing records and four record investigations. Randy Cerveny’s talk focused on the status of world climate extreme archive and existing issues. He brought out some suggested global weather extreme in pressure, rainfall, hail, aridity, wind, tornado, tropical cyclone.

On the basis of the presentations and associated discussions, the final session in this meeting came to 17 actions to be carried out by the ET2.2 on climate monitoring (referred to in the appendix II). Each action agreed in the meeting has the corresponding volunteers and deadline date.


Appendix I: List of Participants

Craig Donlon (Met Office, UK)
Enric Aguilar (University of Rovira i Virgili, Spain)
Hama Kontongomde (WMO Secretariat)
Jay Lawrimore (NOAA/NCDC,USA)
Jose Antonio López (INM, Spain)
Manola Brunet (University of Rovira i Virgili, Spain)
Mark D. Schwartz (University of Wisconsin, USA)
Pierre Bessemoulin (Météo-France, France)
Rainer Hollmann (DWD, Germany)
Randy Cerveny (Arizona State University, USA)
Tom Peterson (NOAA/NCDC,USA)
Wan Azli Wan Hassan (Met Office, Malaysia)
Xiaolan Wang (Environment Canada, Canada)
Zuqiang Zhang (NCC, China)

• Top

This web site is an external branch of the CCl website developed by the ET 2.2 and host by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain)

Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the web site do not reflect necessarily the WMO official position on some issues, and there publication on this site does not imply their endorsement by WMO before they are duly published through WMO official publication procedures and channels