Report on  CIMO-XIV, Geneva, December, 2006

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14th Session of the Commission for Instruments and methods of observations (CIMO-XIV)
 Geneva, Switzerland, 7-14 December 2006

CIMO-XIV - (from left)  Acting CIMO President Dr Canterford, Newly elected CIMO President Dr Nash, Dr Ondras, CIMO Secretariat and  B. Sumner, HMEI Executive Secretary

This report covers various items from the CIMO-XIV considered of particular interest to the HMEI Membership and is not intended to be definitive.
Please see the WMO Final Report of the meeting when it is available.

Attendees
For the full attendees list please see the Participants List here
Several HMEI members attended CIMO-XIV:
Mark Dutton - ENVIRONMENTAL MEASUREMENTS
Ben Dieterink - KIPP & ZONEN
Rémy Pepin-MODEM
Gabriele Kadnar  - SELEX (GEMATRONIK)
The HMEI Executive Secretary, Bruce Sumner, and Administrator, Christine Charstone, also attended.

Opening at 10am
The Acting President of CIMO, Dr Canterford welcomed attendees and introduced the Secretary General of WMO, Mr. Michel Jarraud, to open the meeting.

The Secretary General of WMO in his opening speech noted the work work of CIMO in advancing the scientific knowledge for weather and climate. He recalled the history of measurement instruments up to the current modern developments in these measurements.

Mr. Jarraud said that the work of CIMO had helped to guarantee the stability of the WMO observations network and recognised the primordial nature of the CIMO programme to the work of the other WMO Commissions. The Secretary General noted that the CIMO Intercomparisons had seen the considerable improvements in several types of instruments. Particularly in the last intersessional period he noted the important Intercomparisons done for Radiosondes and Rainfall Intensity instruments. Mr Jarraud said that these activities would lead to better quality instruments and data and also eventually lead to a lowering of costs.

Mr Jarraud also spoke of:
§ The work of CIMO in the training area
§ The new Quality Management (QM) Framework, with the implementation of QM standards by WMO members
§ The CIMO's positive work in compatibility and homogeneity of data, for the amelioration of data sharing

Please click here to see the Secretary General's speech

Acting President of CIMO's Report by Dr Canterford- Doc 3  Please see the document of his report here
Dr Canterford, the Acting President listed the major achievements of CIMO obtained during the previous intersessional period, including:
§ Major Intercomparisons of high quality radiosondes;
§ Completion of laboratory rainfall intensity Intercomparison;
§ Two Technical Conferences;
§ Several training workshops;
§ Publication of World Meteorological Instrument Catalogue;
§ Enhanced collaboration with HMEI;
§ Improved working structure of CIMO;
§ Cross-cutting with other WMO bodies;
§ Seventh edition of the CIMO Guide;
§ 10th International Pyrheliometer Comparison;
§ Input to Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS);
§ Collaboration with Disaster Prevention\ and Mitigation Programme (DPM);
§ Lead support of Quality Management Framework (QMF);
§ Publication of 17 Instrument and Observing Methods (IOM) reports;
§ Promotion of traceability of measurements to International System of Units (SI);
§ Increased access to instrument data through a special web Portal: http://www.wmo.int/web/www/IMOP/WebPortal-AWS/Index.html

Keynote Address Presented by Dr Canterford: "Innovations in Observing Systems and Practices to Meet the Evolving Needs of Members"
Please click here to see the pdf abstract of this presentation

Surface Technology and Measurement Techniques - Doc 4.1
Automation of manned stations was still considered an issue, the continuing need for some level of manned observations was noted.
Discussion ensued on the measurements to be performed at each type of AWS, and the possibility of specifying a standard AWS.

The Chinese Meteorological Administration (CMA) expressed their wish to continue to produce the The World Instrument Instrument Catalogue, supported by CIMO. HMEI and CIMO will also work together on the production of the HMEI Member Product Catalogue, as requested by WMO Executive Council. The CIMO Commission appreciated the fact that both catalogues provide uniform and comparable information.

HMEI introduced a paper introducing the suggested instrument sheets that it had developed and asked that they be endorsed by CIMO. However in the event that CIMO continues to endorse the CMA version of WMIC, there appears to be no particular requirement for HMEI to further develop instrument sheets to be incorporated into its current web-based product catalogue.

CIMO stated that it wanted to encourage equipment manufacturers to develop instruments that can work in extreme weather events. HMEI advised that it will pass this request to its members.

Surface-based instrument Intercomparisons and calibration methods - Doc 4.2
This document recognised that HMEI had been able to contribute the participation of several manufacturers instruments, in addition to those proposed by NMHSs, that were submitted to the Intercomparison of RI Gauges.

Planned Intercomparisons by CIMO during 2007 to 2010 are:

  1. Field Intercomparison of rainfall intensity gauges 2007-2008
  2. Intercomparison of thermometer screens/shields in conjunction with humidity measuring instruments, 2007-2008
  3. Intercomparison of thermometer screens/shields in conjunction with humidity measurement instruments in Arctic regions
  4. Intercomparison of solid precipitation measurement instruments in the Arctic
  5. Intercomparison of present weather sensors in the Arctic
  6. Pilot study sea-level gauges for Tsunami events
  7. Intercomparison of hydrology gauges to cover both normal and extreme events
  8. Study of cloud heights using ceilometers

HMEI advised that it will be pleased to facilitate HMEI Member manufacturers participation in the planned future Intercomparisons.

Upper-Air Systems Intercomparisons - Doc 5.2
Provisional Programme of WMO Upper-Air Intercomparisons 2006-2010

  1. WMO High Quality Radiosonde Regional Intercomparison, Region II, China
  2. WMO International Evaluation of AMDAR Water Vapour Sensor
  3. WMO Evaluation of Wind Profiler Wind Measurement Quality and Quality Control Procedures
  4. International Test-bed Experiments and Pilot Studies for Integrated In-situ and Remote Sensing Upper-Air Networks (including tropical and subtropical tests)
  5. Weather Radar Workshops to Examine Differences on Signal and Data Processing Using Common Signal Data Set

Guide to Meteorological Instruments and Methods of Observation and information dissemination - Doc 6.3
 Significant contributions to the first draft could not be incorporated and will be included in the next revision of the Guide.

New Procedures for updating the Guide:
§   There will now be a Rapporteur, Dr Zahumensky, on the CIMO Guide, who will keep the Guide up to date;
§ Updates will be initiated as soon as a sound proposal is submitted;
§ There are several additional steps, resulting eventually in the CIMO President approving the update;
§ Incremental updates will be published, as soon as the above process allows. These updates should be considerable more frequent than previous updates.

Natural Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DPM) Programme - Doc 7.2
Disaster Risk Management:
§ most countries react to disasters after they happen
§ countries need to be more active in predicting and so prevent disasters were possible
§ there is a need for new observing networks and updating existing networks
§ CIMO contributions to the activities of DPM have been identified as including:

w providing more observations in harsh environments
w good maintenance of instruments
w additional observing networks

Collaboration with relevant International Organizations - Doc 9
This document looked at the relationships between CIMO and other international organizations, including HMEI. The document recognised very positively the work that HMEI had done with CIMO in the intersessional period and thanked them for this. 

HMEI Presentation to the Meeting:
HMEI briefly recapped the history, aims and activities of HMEI. HMEI also stated:
§ HMEI confirms its commitment to be involved in as many CIMO activities as possible regarding the private hydro-meteorological sector instruments, systems, software and services. 
 § HMEI will continue to provide experts from the manufacturing industry to CIMO ET meetings and recognizes the usefulness of the joint exchange of information from such co-operation; with CIMO and WMO becoming aware of new manufacturing capabilities and HMEI members becoming aware of system and instruments requirements from WMO.
§ Regarding Intercomparisons, HMEI will continue to work closely with CIMO in future Intercomparisons. HMEI encourages CIMO to extend these Intercomparisons with other commissions, such as Hydrology and JCOMM, and HMEI commits itself to assist with such joint-commission Intercomparisons as much as it is able. 
§ The results of Intercomparisons assist manufacturers to improve their products which in turn assist WMO members to obtain more cost-effective solutions for their networks and systems. 
§ In addition Least Developed Countries will benefit from HMEI members commitment to continuing producing high quality and affordable, traditional meteorological instruments.

HMEI invited CIMO members and specifically the new CIMO President, Dr John Nash, to attend HMEI meetings, noting that there would be a HMEI member meeting at AMS in January 2007 and a HMEI General Assembly at MeteoHydex in May 2007.

The HMEI presentation evoked considerable response from the meeting audience and several items were raised for further strengthening the collaboration between HMEI and CIMO.
Please see the text for inclusion in the Summary of CIMO-XIV in Working Paper of Doc 9 from the session.

Future work and working structure of the Commission - Doc 10
The current structure of CIMO, its OPAGs and ETs was deemed very satisfactory. There were only some small changes to the structure of CIMO. These changes were the addition of Coordinators and Rapporteurs to the CIMO structure and  addition of Vice-Chairs to the ETs. The Terms of Reference (TORs) recommended by the Management Group (MG) in their meeting in July 2006 in Geneva, to be adopted. The CIMO MG to be re-established, with the addition of CIMO coordinator for GEOSS; a coordinator for the Natural Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DPM); and a coordinator for Quality Management Framework (QMF).

The ETs for CIMO remain the same, with the exception of Team B1, where the word "Radiosonde" has been deleted from the title, so that the name of this team now reads as: Expert Team on Upgrading Global Upper-Air Networks.

HMEI will continue its extensive collaboration with CIMO on these ETs. The Terms of Reference (TORs) of all the OPAGs and Expert Teams were reviewed, and considerable changes where introduced to the work for the next four years. Please see the revised TORs here.

Future work CIMO will undertake includes:
§ Additional Intercomparisons;
§ Funding for Intercomparisons and RICs
§ QMF input from CIMO

It was requested that the OPAG-SURFACE, in collaboration with other technical commissions and the Hydro-Meteorological Equipment Industry Association (HMEI), collect and update the guidelines for the safe handling and disposal of mercury based instruments. It also noted that information on replacement instrument options could be found in the CIMO Guide.

The meeting also elected people to the positions of Chairmen of the OPAGs, and the Chairs of the ETs as well as the core members of the ETs. For details see: Annexes  A and B of the revised TORs document linked above.

Election of officers of CIMO - Doc 12
The nominations for the new President and Vice-President of CIMO were:
§ President - Dr John Nash - UK
§ Vice-President - Mr Rainer Dombrowsky - USA

Both nominees were elected unopposed.

Keynote Scientific Presentations
There were, on the final day of the conference, two Keynote scientific presentations. Firstly the Russian Presentation, on its extensive instrument testing facilities and secondly John Nash, from the UK, gave the PowerPoint Presentation "Recent progress in the development of Upper air Systems" by Catherine Gaffard. Please click here to see Dr Nash's presentation.

Round Table Discussions
There was a round table discussion introduced towards the end of the conference. This session was very lively, showing the many issues and work that members would wish CIMO to address. The suggestions were taken on board by the Chairman to be collated into an informal guide for planning of future work to be considered for CIMO.

Closing of the conference
The Acting President Dr Canterford thanked various people for their work and personal help to him during his term at the head of CIMO. Dr Hayes, the WMO World Weather Watch Director, then made a statement thanking the conference for their deliberations and also various people and organizations, including HMEI. He thanked the outgoing Acting President for his excellent work. The work of Dr Canterford was also recognised and thanked by Dr Guzman from Russia and the new President Dr Nash from UK. Dr Canterford then closed the conference at 12noon, Thursday, 14 December, 2006.