World climate research programme open science conference 2011
Goals and visions
A better understanding of the behaviour of the climate system and its interactions with other Earth system components is critical to predict its future evolution, reduce vulnerability to high impact weather and climate events, and sustain life. This need is perhaps greater than ever before given that humans have emerged as the dominant agent of future change. Progress will require, moreover, an increasingly holistic approach across scientific disciplines, as well as an unprecedented commitment to the development of a diverse and talented future workforce.
To advance its attack on such challenges, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) will assemble for the first time ever its entire research community, and engage other key international research programmes, in a major Open Science Conference (OSC) in October 2011. Through a unique synthesis of presented research findings, the OSC will assess our current state of knowledge on climate variability and change, identify the most urgent scientific issues and research challenges, and ascertain how the WCRP can best facilitate research and develop partnerships critical for progress.
Anticipated outcomes
The WCRP OSC represents an exclusive opportunity to assemble the international scientific community working to advance understanding and prediction of variability and change of the Earth’s physical climate system on all space and time scales. The OSC will facilitate cross-fertilization across the diverse research communities within the WCRP, as well as with other international research programmes, including the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) and the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP).
The OSC will appraise the current state of climate science, thereby making a measurable contribution on the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will identify key opportunities and challenges in observations, modeling, analysis and process research required to understand and predict responses of the Earth as a system.
By entraining as many young scientists and students as possible from across the world, including less-developed and developing countries, the OSC will facilitate growth of the diverse future workforce needed to meet the increasingly complex scientific challenges of the future.
Possible daily themes and related topics for plenary talks and poster sessions
Monday 24th: the Climate System Components and their interactions:
Atmospheric composition
Oceans and climate
Land and climate
Cryosphere and climate
Ecosystems and climate
Humans and climate
Water and the Earth System
Tuesday 25th: Observation and Analysis of the Climate System:
Design and improvement of the integrated observing system
Maintaining and enhancing ocean observations
Atmospheric measurements (including upper troposphere and stratosphere)
Earth system data assimilation, analysis and synthesis
Integrating regional data sets into global products
Understanding and characterizing climate extremes
Wednesday 26th: Improving predictive capabilities:
Predictability and predictions on seasonal to decade time-scales
Interactions of weather and climate
Modelling of regional climate
Improving performance of climate models
Quantifying and characterizing uncertainty
Improving energy and water cycle representation in models
Confronting models and observations
Development of Earth System Models
Defining and meeting user needs
Thursday 27th: Climate impact assessment:
Stratospheric ozone
Global climate variability and change (IPCC)
Sea Level Variability and change
CMIP-5 results
Polar climate change
Attribution research
Friday 28th: challenges and the future:
Linking climate research to adaptation measures
Mitigation: Climate engineering options
The next generation of experts: Capacity building
Future of WCRP
Possible Topics for Parallel Sessions
CMIP5 results
Earth data assimilation, analysis and synthesis
Variability, predictability and prediction from seasonal to centennial scales
Weather-climate interactions
Prediction of regional climate
Improving performance of climate models
Monsoon processes and prediction
Sea level variability and change
Extreme climate events and their attribution
Atmospheric composition and climate
Cryosphere and climate
Land and climate
Oceans and climate
Water and the Earth System
Anthropogenic climate change
Science needs to evaluate climate engineering options