Transcript World Climate Research Programme Open Science Conference Gilbert Brunet WWRP/JSC Chair CAS MG meeting, 15-17 November 2011 Madrid, Spain.

World Climate Research Programme
Open Science Conference
Gilbert Brunet
WWRP/JSC Chair
CAS MG meeting, 15-17 November 2011
Madrid, Spain
WCRP Open Science Conference
24-28 October 2011
Denver, Colorado, USA
http://conference2011.wcrp-climate.org
Promoting, Facilitating and Coordinating
Climate Research in Service to Society
WCRP Open Science Conference
• Assembly of WCRP affiliated researchers and partners (~1900 participants)
• Exclusive opportunity for exchange and collaboration across diverse research
communities (e.g., WCRP, WWRP, IGBP, IHDP, …) working to advance
understanding and prediction of climate variability and change across scales
The Conference has:
• Appraise current state of climate science ( IPCC AR5)
• Identify most urgent scientific issues and research
challenges
• Ascertain how WCRP can best facilitate research and
develop partnerships critical for progress
• Facilitate growth of future, diverse workforce
http://conference2011.wcrp-climate.org
WCRP Open Science Conference
International Scientific Committee
• Jim Hurrell, Chair, NCAR, USA
• Ghassem Asrar, WCRP, Switzerland
• Sandrine Bony, LMD/IPSL, France
• Tony Busalacchi, ESSIC/U. Md, USA
• Christian Jakob, Monash U., Australia
• Rik Leemans, ESSP Chair, Netherlands
• Jerry Meehl, NCAR, USA
• Terry Nakajima, U. Tokyo, Japan
• Carlos Nobre, IGBP Chair, Brazil
• Ted Shepherd, Univ. Toronto, Canada
• Julia Slingo, MetOffice, UK
• Koni Steffen, Univ. Colorado, USA
• Kevin Trenberth, NCAR, USA
• Carolina Vera, Univ. Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Martin Visbeck, IFM-GEOMAR, Germany
http://conference2011.wcrp-climate.org
WCRP Open Science Conference
1900+ registered participants of
which:
• 300 students
• 200 early career scientis of which
250 are sponsored
• 2100 abstracts submitted
• 190 oral presentations, // sessions
• 20 plenary presentations
• 84 countries represented
Some WCRP OSC highlights
• Although the focus was on climate
change, seamless weather-climate
connections were emphasized throughout;
• WWRP has participated in many of the
WCRP programs that were highlighted,
such as GEWEX, CLIVAR and SPARC;
• Jarraud spoke of many exemplary
weather-climate collaborations such as
GARP, GATE, FGGE, CGOS and
JCOMM.
Some WCRP OSC highlights
• Jarraud stressed that users need concrete
information for services and decision support
systems related to the frequency and severity of
extreme events and the associated risks;
• Jakob, co-chair of the WMO Working Group on
Numerical Experimentation (WGNE), pointed out
that numerical weather prediction has effectively
revolutionized the world by producing a
sustained one day per decade rate of
improvement in the accuracy of weather
forecasts, but this has gone largely unnoticed.
Some WCRP OSC highlights
• Jacob advocated in concordance with WWRP
(a?) major coordinated international model
development project (s?) with associated supercomputer facilities to help catch up with the
accelerating need for accurate earth system
information for weather and climate in a
changing environment;
• The links between weather and climate time
scales were also discussed through examples of
high impact weather events and their attribution
to a changing climate.
Some WCRP OSC highlights
• Numerous presentations were made by users
who need weather and climate information for
applications in water supply, food supply,
insurance, health, economics, energy, and
security;
• Some panellists expressed frustration with all
the talk of uncertainty, together with
acknowledging the need for better education on
probabilistic products emphasizing likelihoods
rather than uncertainty.
Session B1
Prediction from sub-seasonal to
multi-decadal scales
(conveners: D. Anderson, G.
Brunet, B. Kirtman, I.-S. Kang)
Main findings
• Weather to Sub-seasonal to Decadal is the
foundation for seamless prediction;
• Some prediction skill at subseasonalseasonal-interannual and decadal scales;
• Land surface initialization can improve skill;
• Tropical SST trends: observed patterns are
poorly simulated in coupled models, AMIP
simulations agree with climate response;
• Predictive skill increased under specific
regimes and not others.
WCRP Research and
Emerging Challenges Gaps
• Multi-models ensembles and stochastic
parameterization;
• Prediction of changes in tropical SST;
• Prediction metrics;
• Decadal prediction building on CMIP5;
• Need for better initialization schemes for coupled
atmosphere-ocean;
• A better understanding of the modulation of highimpact weather by the low frequency variability;
• Importance to understand the mid-latitude and
tropical interactions.
Conclusions (1/2)
• Urgent need for actionable climate information
based on sound science;
• “actionable science” emerged as the mantra;
• Environment/climate related issues and concerns
that the public and decision makers are facing
are complex and require trans-disciplinary
approach to address them.
Conclusions (2/2)
• The need for “symbiotic” relationship between
providers and users of climate information to
ensure ‘actionable’ climate information is
developed and used effectively: timely,
accessible, easy to understand;
• Urgent need for training and development of
next generation of scientists and decision
makers who pursue and promote the use of
actionable climate/environmental information.
• What is the role of the NMHSs?
Thank you for your attention!
http://www.wcrp-climate.org