Transcript Climate - Earth Observing Laboratory

Facility Strategic Plan: Climate Perspective
 The climate is changing: It is likely to
continue to change!
 Need for a comprehensive climate
observing system to monitor, understand
and predict climate changes!
Team: Junhong (June) Wang
ATD: Dave Parsons, James Pinto, Jeff Stith, Mark Tschudi, Dave Rogers, Jorgen
Jensen …
NCAR/UCAR: Dave Carlson, Kevin Trenberth, …
External: Judy Curry (GeoTech), Steve Sherwood (Yale), Tony DelGenio (NASA/GISS),
Tony Reale (NOAA), Imke Durre (NOAA/NCDC), Tom Peterson (NOAA/NCDC), Bill
Rossow (NASA/GISS) …
Outline
1. Components of climate observing system
2. General scientific requirements for climate
observations
3. Scientific and observational needs
4. ATD contributions
5. A list of Resources
Components of climate observing system
Terrestrial
Atmosphere
Accurate
Long-term
Consistent
From GCOS-82 (2003)
Oceans
General scientific requirements for climate observations
1. Climate Change: To characterize the state of the global climate
system and its variability as they happen,
2. Climate Forcing: To monitor the forcing of the climate system
(natural and anthropogenic),
3. Climate Predictions: To support the prediction of global climate
change through providing initial states for climate models and
validating/improving models through climate process
observations,
4. Regional Climate: To project global climate change information
down to regional and national scales,
5. Climate Impacts: To characterize extreme events important in
impact assessment and adaptation, and to assess risk and
vulnerability.
Areas:
1. Upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UT/LS)
2. Clouds
3. Aerosols
4. Regional impacts: extreme events
5. Polar/Cold Regions
6. Ocean
7. Global climate monitoring systems
The whole carbon cycle, Greenhouse gases, Water
cycle, Weather …
• Scientific Needs:
Upper Air (UT/LS)
1. To reconcile observations of global warming (surface versus atmos. obs),
2. To assess and understand long-term changes of UT/LS humidity,
3. To understand/model the evolution of cirrus clouds requiring highly accurate RH,
4. To increase temporal/spatial coverage of meteorological data in the UT/LS.
• Observational Needs:
1. To develop reference radiosonde with accurate T/RH measurements in UT/LS,
2. To explore GPS radio-occultation and ground-based GPS measurements,
3. To improve satellite moisture retrievals in all conditions,
4. To inter-compare and cross-validate satellite and radiosonde data, such as
establishing satellite upper-air network (SUAN),
5. To increase aircraft sounding profiles, such as dropsonde and UAV,
6. To develop a satellite mission to measure winds using lidar (BAMS, 76, 869-888),
7. To consider fleets of constant level balloons that can be tracked for winds.
Scientific Needs:
Clouds
“The single largest uncertainty in determining the climate sensitivity to either natural or
anthropogenic changes are clouds and their effects on radiation and their role in the
hydrological cycle” (IPCC, 2001)
1. Cloud feedback: It is unknown about the sign of cloud feedback with respect to the
increase of greenhouse gases, its variations with time and space, its relation with
indirect aerosol forcing, and its coupling to the surface.
2. Cloud modeling: Handling the physics and/or the parameterization of cloud in climate
models remains a central difficulty.
• Observational needs:
1. To increase and improve observations of cloud vertical structure, cloud IWC/LWC,
radiative heating and optical depth profiles and the distribution and geometry of
clouds,
2. To identify the phase of water substance to understand the life cycle of water
substance in various regions,
3. To provide accurate instantaneous information on the dynamic and thermodynamic
state of the atmosphere around clouds, such as dropsondes to constrain large-scale
advective tendencies,
4. To develop and implement systems that will enable high-resolution monitoring of
moisture and wind variations (especially vertical wind) helping understanding meso
and convective-scale dynamics.
Aerosols
• Scientific Needs:
1. To characterize the nature of aerosols, their
radiative properties and interactions with chemistry,
2. To quantify and understand aerosol’s indirect
From NACIP
effects on clouds,
3. To understand aerosol sources, sinks and transports.
• Observational needs:
1. To measure vertical profiles of aerosol number concentration and size by aerosol
type,
2. To identify the cloud active portion of the aerosol (e.g. Cloud Condensation Nuclei
and Ice forming Nuclei), and to develop methods to measure and model (e.g. in
climate models) the physical mechanisms governing the interactions of these cloud
active nuclei with clouds,
3. To develop techniques to monitor aerosol transport and mixing in the surface layer
and over global scales,
4. To consolidate baseline measurements and further develop a strategy to produce
long-term homogeneous observations.
Get input from “the NCAR Aerosol Program Research
Discussion series” ????
Regional impacts:
Extreme events
• Scientific Needs:
1. To better monitor extreme events on regional scales since they are likely to become
more frequent as climate warms,
2. To improve the assessment of the impact of climate change on regional/national
scales,
3. To improve understanding and projecting societal and ecosystem impacts.
Observational needs:
1. To provide information on regional patterns of climate change, variability and extreme
events, i.e. high-frequency (e.g., hourly for precipitation) and high-density climate
observations,
2. Drought monitoring: high-frequency precipitation measurements, more rain
measurements in regions of complex terrain and over individual and nested
watershed areas to close water budget, and soil moisture/porosity measurements,
3. To develop sensors/networks to monitor changes in land cover.
• Scientific Needs:
Polar/Cold Regions
“It is no known whether these changes (a decline in the extent and thickness of Arctic
sea ice in the summer and recent Arctic warming) reflect anthropogenic warming
transmitted either from the atmosphere or the ocean or whether they mostly reflect a
major mode of multi-decadal variability.” (IPCC, 2001)
1. To better assess the enhanced warming (already begun) predicted by GCMs in the polar
regions (particularly the Arctic),
2. To better understand the processes that impact the recession of the cryosphere (sea ice,
glaciers, snow fields) in response to global warming,
3. To monitor potential feedbacks which contribute to accelerated warming in polar regions
including attendant decreases in sea ice albedo/extent, increases in methane emissions from
thawing permafrost, changes in cloud properties and the impact in oceanic deepwater
formation,
4. To improve understanding and projection of societal and ecosystem impacts (which could be
enormous).
Observational needs:
1. To develop long term monitoring equipment capable of withstanding and performing harsh
environment,
2. To deploy UAVs to monitor remote regions of the globe with regularity,
3. To increase involvement with SEARCH by augmenting their observing stations with improved or
complimentary instrumentation or additional remote sites.
Ocean
1. To improve understanding of the ocean ecosystems and those processes that
contribute to uncertainty in estimates of climate change: a need for sustained
support for remote wind, topography, sea-ice, SST and ocean-color
measurements.
2. To monitor heat and freshwater storage and transport, to test the ocean
component in climate models, and for climate change detection and attribution: a
need for global deployment of the surface date-buoy array and of the Argo-gloat
programme.
3. To provide the climate-quality time series for model testing, climate change
detection, calibration of air-sea flux estimates and technology development: a need
to establish a sparse network of global-ocean reference stations.
4. To determine the nature of the global carbon cycle, for future scenario projections
and for a full understanding of potential mitigation strategies: a need for the
measurement of the state and change of carbon sources and sinks in the ocean.
5. To characterize ocean climate variability and change, provide a capacity for
monitoring the oceanic uptake of heat, freshwater and carbon dioxide and improve
the chances of early identification of abrupt climate change arising from deep
ocean processes: a need for measurements of the full-depth ocean, such as
regular, full-depth ocean surveys and surface altimetry.
From GCOS-82 (2003)
•
Goal: Promote an international comprehensive,
coordinated and sustained Earth observation
system.
•
Results: Established ad hoc Group on Earth
Observations (GEO) to prepare a 10-year
Implementation Plan that builds on existing systems
and initiatives and sets the Tokyo ministerial in April
or May 2004 and the 10-year plan for Brussels
ministerial in late 2004.
WMO: Global Climate Observing System
Ten Principles for Climate Monitoring (NRC, 199)
1. Management of Network Change: Assess how and the extent to
which a proposed change could influence the existing and future climatology.
2. Parallel Testing: Operate the old system simultaneously with the
replacement system.
3. Metadata: Fully document each observing system and its operating procedures
4. Data Quality and Continuity: Assess data quality and homogeneity as a
part of routine operation procedures.
5. Integrated Environmental Assessment: Anticipate the use of data in the
development of environmental assessments.
6. Historical Significance: Maintain operation of observing systems that have
provided homogeneous datasets over a period of many decades.
7. Complementary Data: Give the highest priority in the design and
implementation of new sites or instrumentation within an observing system to
data-poor regions, poorly observed variables, regions sensitive to change,
and key measurements with inadequate temporal resolution.
8. Climate Requirements: Give network designers, operators, and instrument
engineer’s climate monitoring requirements at the outset of network design.
9. Continuity of Purpose: Maintain a stable, long-term commitment to these
observations, and develop a clear transition plan from serving research needs
to serving operational purposes.
10. Data and Metadata Access: Develop data management systems that
facilitate access, use, and interpretation of data and products by users.
Climate Monitoring: ATD roles
1. To develop next generation of instrumentation for future
climate observing networks, such as reference radiosonde
development for future reference radiosonde network,
2. To play a leading role in near-real time monitoring of the health
of current or future climate observing networks,
3. To assist operational centers for “Management of network
change”, “parallel testing” and others,
4. To hasten technological transfer from research observations to
operational or sustained observations,
5. To establish to test in situ instrumentation in realistic
simulations of a testing facility environment, which might be a
real assist in the climate community's evaluation of
instrumentation deployed for climate networks.
ATD contributions
1. Long term climate monitoring (see previous one)
2. Climate modeling:
• Intensive measurements (field experiments) to gain observations in
support of parameterization for climate models,
• Using field experiment data to validate climate models.
3. Clouds/Aerosols: Airborne in-situ sensors, passive remote sensing
(AIMR/MCR) on HIAPER,
4. Satellite: Satellite validations and development of future satellite
sensors,
5. Ocean: Multispectral remote sensing instruments on HIAPER for
high-resolution sea-ice (VIS/IR/thermal), SST (thermal) and ocean
color (VIS/IR).
6. ????
Resource lists
1. IPCC, 2001
2. “The second report on the adequacy of the global observing systems for
climate in support of the UNFCC”, 2003 (GCOS-82)
3. “Status report on the key climate variables”, 2003 (GCOS-82)
4. “The need for a systems approach to climate observations” (Trenberth et al.
2003)
5. “Adequacy of climate observing systems”, 1999 (NRC)
6. “Reconciling observations of global temperature change”, 2000 (NRC)
7. Strategic Plan for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program on
http://www.climatescience.gov/default.htm/
8. Earth Observation Summit on http://www.earthobservationsummit.gov/
9. GEO on http://earthobservations.org/
10. National Aerosol-Climate Interaction Program (NACIP) on http://wwwNACIP.ucsd.edu/
11. ….