Meeting of GCOS Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate (AOPC) 14th session
Geneva, Switzerland, 21-25 April 2008

The HMEI attendees of this meeting were:
Bruce Sumner, HMEI Executive Secretary and Christine Charstone, HMEI Administrator.

Please see here for the full list of participants.

For the agenda and links to the documents please go to: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/index.php?name=aopcXIV

This report is not intended to be definitive, but highlights items considered of interest for HMEI Members.

Opening of the Meeting
The meeting was opened with a welcome by Dr Tyagi, Director of the WMO Climate and Water Programme.

Review of Actions from AOPC-XIII (Doc. 2a)
Item 17:
From this item it was noted that CLIMATE TEMP messages are no longer required. But manufacturers are still required to produce these messages. Manufacturers need to know as soon as possible if the messages are in fact still needed or not, in order to be able to adapt as necessary their software.

Report from the GCOS Director (Doc. 3)
David Goodrich the GCOS Director gave a presentation of his report, which outlined activities of the past year and areas of future emphasis for the Secretariat.
This report is available at: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aopcXIV/3_ReportDirector.pdf

Items noted in Dr Goodrich's report were:

• There has been a request that GCOS produce a "GCOS 2009 Progress Report and Supplement" outlining the current status of progress on the GCOS implementation plan. This report will also focus on new actions and drivers such as the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability agenda, as well as regional climate needs. This report is currently under development;

• Observing System Implications, drawn from the workshop “Learning from the IPCC Fourth Assessment,” held in Sydney, October 2007;

• Climate Information needs for Adaptation to Climate Change;

• The GCOS Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN), reporting on the meeting of GRUAN at Lindenberg, February 2008;

• The meeting of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), Joint Scientific Committee 29th Session, Arcachon, March 2008;

• GCOS participation in the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Fourth Session, Cape Town, November 2007;

• The GCOS Interim Director will be Dr A Karpov until a permanent replacement is appointed to the directorship. Dr Goodrich will shortly be leaving his post to return to work in USA.

GSN, GUAN and Interactions with CBS – Update from Secretariat (Doc. 4)
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aopcXIV/4_SecretariatReport.pdf
This document summarized the latest status and developments relevant to the GSN and GUAN, including an assessment of the adequacy of water vapour observations, and a description of interactions with the WMO Commission for Basic Systems (CBS) since the last session of AOPC.

Of note from this report was an option expressed, in the document, by Chris Kummerow, representing the GEWEX Radiation Panel; quote: "for climate research purposes, status and variability of lower-tropospheric water vapour is more or less understood, the argument being that forecast models, such as from ECMWF, now do as well in the southern hemisphere where vapour information is almost exclusively from satellites as they do in the northern hemisphere where rawinsonde data is more abundant. The biggest issue today is upper-tropospheric water vapour, since radiosondes historically had very difficult times making accurate measurements. Some of the GPS occultation measurements seems to have great potential offering reliable estimates in this region. Verification by very high quality ground-based systems is still necessary, but perhaps done as easily with lidar systems as with rawinsondes. From a GRP perspective, it is thus difficult to justify a significant effort to improve and homogenize global rawinsonde data. Satellites have become increasingly sophisticated and now rival the quality of sondes while having homogeneous coverage. This is not to say that improved synoptic observations may not be useful for a number of weather related applications - they simply are not homogeneous enough - never have been and probably never will be - for use in climate monitoring."

It should be noted that this opinion was not particularly shared by the meeting participants of this GCOS/AOPC XIV.

GSN Monitoring Centre status and results - DWD (Doc. 5b) and Activities of GSN Monitoring Centre - JMA (Doc. 5a).
These were reports on the GSN activates from both Germany (DWD) and Japan (JMA) were given. Generally the reception of data from meteorological stations is improving, although certain areas continue to lag behind (see diagrams in report Doc. 5b). Japan has been conducting trial monitoring of BUFR-CLIMAT, during January 2008. JMA reported it has not received any BUFR-CLIMATs except from JMA itself, which suggests there are still problems with this.

The meeting, in discussion of these two documents, noted the need for a better understanding of the WIS (WMO Information System) and its implications for GSN data.

Report of the GCOS Implementation Project Manager (Doc. 10)
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aopcXIV/10_ImplManager.pdf
Richard Thigpen, the GCOS Implementation Project Manager, reported on the activities and initiatives, to revitalise and improve the performance of  the GCOS upper air and surface networks. These activities include training workshops around the world, which HMEI members have been actively involved with.

Future projects for GRUAN includes:

• The planned renovation of the GSN stations in Ecuador, funding provided by Spain. Ecuador has 4 GSN stations which have not worked for some time. A survey mission to the stations will precede the actual purchase of equipment;

• Renovation of the GSN stations in Angola, the project is funded by KNMI. This renovation must be preceded by observer training which Mozambique has agreed to provide;

• A GUAN upper air observing workshop is planned for February 2009, possibly in India. Additional emphasis will be placed on the support and safety of the hydrogen generators.;

• Renovation of the Luanda, Angola upper air station as an additional GUAN station

Project to be completed next year as funding  is provided includes:

• Renovation of the Luanda, Angola upper air as an additional GUAN station;

• Renovation of the GSN stations in Madagascar;

• Renovation of the GUAN station at Rarotonga by providing a replacement hydrogen generator;

• Establishment of another Technical Support Programme (TSP) in Africa;

• Establishment of a support contract for hydrogen generators in developing countries.

The meeting noted the good work done in the implementation area. However concern was expressed that, despite the great help given by the various donors, there was an ongoing fall in available funding.

Report from WG-ARO: Development of GRUAN (Doc. 12)
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aopcXIV/12_GRUAN_Development.pdf 
Peter Thorne presented the current status of the GRUAN. He reported on the work done at the GRUAN meeting in February this year, which was also attended by HMEI. Please see the HMEI report on that GRUAN meeting here. Dr Thorne asked the meeting for input/clarification to the work that was done at the Lindenberg meeting, regarding issues which were unable to be decided by that meeting in February.

Report from the WMO Observing Systems Division (Doc. 9)
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aopcXIV/9_WMO_OSD.pdf
This presentation, by Dr Miroslav Ondras, reported on the CBS and CIMO involvement with GCOS. This included:

• CBS Lead Centres for GCOS;

• RBCNs/ABCN and GSN/GUAN - the Regional Basic Climatological Networks (RBCNs) and the Antarctic Basic Climatological Network (ABCN), networks composed of selected climatological stations in the respective WMO Regions and in the Antarctic;

• GCOS Matters related to CBS - this includes monitoring of networks, Rapporteurs, design of networks, traceability of measurements and standards;

• Training Workshops, including those with which, it was recognised, HMEI members have been involved;

• New training that is planned to be held in India for RA II GUAN stations in early 2009

• Intercomparisons that CIMO has carried out in the last four years and which HMEI members are involved:
  a.Laboratory Intercomparisons of Rainfall Intensity Gauges (Sep. 2004-Sep. 2005);
  b.Intercomparison of the High Quality Radiosonde Systems (Feb. 2005);
  c.Tenth International and Regional Pyrheliometer Comparisons (Sep.-Oct. 2005);
  d.Field Intercomparisons of Rainfall Intensity Measuring Instruments (started in Sep. 2007); and
  e.Combined screen/shield and humidity sensor Intercomparisons (about to start).

GCOS was invited to be involved in planning future WMO instrument Intercomparisons, as Intercomparisons help improve climate data quality.
GCOS was also asked to consider further involvement in Training Workshops of Upper-air Measurements e.g. the RAV Workshop in Fiji, end of 2008.

CO2-CH4 Comprehensive Networks and Ozone Baseline Networks (Doc. 14)
Some items to note from this report were:

• Sensor manufacturers should be aware that CO2 needs to be measured to an accuracy of 1 in 10,000;

• There is a perceived need for expanding the observation networks for atmospheric gases;

• There is a need to Improve quality control;

• Transition is foreseen from research based networks to operational networks;

• Cavity ring-down measurements for Greenhouse gases, seen as promising technology.

Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) and Archive (Doc.15)
The World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC) is the central archive for the BRSN. The WRMC will eventually be permanently located at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany.  This report gave information about the current state and the future of the World Radiation Monitoring Center.

The information in this archive will eventually (after the 1st September 2008) be available through the search facility at http://www.pangaea.de/. PANGAEA is already used to access extensive geo-scientific and environmental data.

Establishment of a global observing network for aerosols (Doc. 16)
This presentation noted that generally the Aerosol networks need to be expanded and better co-ordinated. There is a now a GAW Aerosol LIDAR Observing Network (GAIOLN), which is used mainly for measurement verification.

Activities of the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) (Doc. 16a)
http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/aopcXIV/16a_WDCGG.pdf 
This presentation from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), reported the WDCGG activates for 2007including the revision of the the "Data Reporting Manual for WDCGG" and the new WDCGG website becoming available at http://gaw.kishou.go.jp/wdcgg/wdcgg.html.

It was noted that the 15th Session of Global Atmospheric Watch (GAW), will be in August/September 2009.

Marine Issues - (Docs. 24, 25, 26, 27, 27a)

• The Global Ocean Observing System is basically in the hands of the research community, which is a problem for continuing the programmes in the future, particularly with regard to funding. See Recommendation No. 67.

• OceanSITES is a programme of long term, high quality, multi-disciplinary moorings that can also be used as sites for the development and testing of new instrumentation, which is still a requirement for the ocean observing systems. There is a need to encourage pilot projects. See http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/obs/index.php.

• The Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) group has suggested the development of an instrument package designed for shipboard mounting to provide higher quality data than currently available, particularly for data suitable for climate purposes. However this has proved to be a difficult and expensive exercise, and appears not to be feasible.

Climate Issues - (Docs. 29 - 37)
The actions items relevant to GCOS from the GCOS Implementation Plan were discussed. These included accepting several climate observing programmes, particularly from the atmospheric composition community, into GCOS observing programmes, e.g. CO2 and CH4, adherence to GCOS monitoring principles, both for land-based and satellite-based observing systems, problems with obtaining funding to continue network continuity in a sustainable manner, data rescue of historical climate data from worldwide sources, including meteorological services and other organizations.

Summary Session - (Doc. 28)
Finally the group discussed and reviewed the 91 items from the consolidated list of conclusions, recommendations and actions that came out of the meeting during the week.

• Item 26 reads: AOPC requested that WG ARO provide specifications for a reference Radiosonde to HMEI, with a view to vendors providing such sondes for the 2010 Intercomparison.