NOTES FROM THE FIFTH FORMAL COORDINATED ENERGY AND WATER-CYCLEOBSERVATIONS PROJECT (CEOP) TELECONFERENCE ON AMERICAS REGIONAL
HYDROCLIMATE PROJECTS AND REFERENCE SITE ISSUES HELD ON18 FEBRUARY 2010
Final DRAFT, 9 July 2010
1.

INTRODUCTIONthThe 5 Americas RHP and Reference Sites Teleconference related to the Coordinated Energyand Water-Cycle Observations Project (CEOP) took place on Thursday 18 February 2010 at
20:00 UTC.
The issues that were discussed on the subject conference call included:nd

1. Special Announcements: Outcome of the 22 GEWEX SSG Mtg (25-29 January 2010)
New Delhi, India
2. On-going Requests to Reference Site managers: (a) Reference site metadata(documentation) updates; (b) Ancillary dataset availability questionnaire.
3. Status: Reference Site data archive:(http://data.eol.ucar.edu/master_list/?project=CEOP/EOP-3/4)
4. RHP/Reference Site data providers/managers reports
Participants
Toshio Koike
Dennis Lettenmaier
Hugo Berbery
Luiz Horta
Alessandro Araujo
Scot Loehrer
Sam Benedict
Petra Koudelova
2.

(CEOP Co-Chair)(CEOP Co-Chair)(LPB Representative)(LBA reference site data manger)(LBA representative)(CEOP Reference Site Data Archive manager)(CEOP International Coordination Function)(CEOP International Coordination Function)

NEXT CONFERENCE CALLthThe next, 6 CEOP Americas RHP and Reference Sites Teleconference is proposed to takeplace on Tuesday 15 June 2010 at 20:00 UTC. Benedict and Koudelova have the action (A1)
to inform the group of the details of the next call nearer to the time of the call and to coordinate
the origination of the call (action A1a). In this context, a calendar of the dates and times of all
the CEOP conference calls for 2010-2011 was distributed to the participants for their futurereference.
3.

CEOP AND CEOP DATA GROUP GENERAL ISSUES(3.1a) Benedict reiterated the main items of interest to the participants that came out of theCEOP Third Annual meeting, held from 19-21 August 2009 at Melbourne, Australia. He noted thatefforts had been made to undertake the main action items from the meeting that included:(i) Action was assigned to the Data Management Working Group to submit a proposal with animplementation scheme and schedule for defining and organizing a CEOP 10 year dataset.
(ii) The CEOP Co-Chairs agreed to take action to use existing material contained in the CEOP
submittal to the WCRP/GEWEX Legacy document to develop a draft of the initial CEOP

Synthesis Document by the end of October 2009, with submission set for early 2010. However,this action will involve many members of the CEOP community before it is submitted forpublication. Subsequently long and short draft versions of the document were developed andremain under revision including incorporation of more background on the proposed CEOP 10Year Dataset (see item 3.2a, below). This proposed expansion of the article has delayed its
development schedule moving the proposed publication date nearer to the end of 2010. Benedictand Koudelova have the action to move this project forward and keep the group informed of its
progress.
(iii) Activation of a number of small Task Teams including a Hydrologic Applications Project (HAP)
Team, Land Modeling Team and a Global to Regional Scale Analysis Team.
(iv) It was agreed that CEOP would embrace some of the main tenets of Adaptation to Climate
Change (ACC) and would look into ways of contributing to those in a direct manner. Some ideas
related to this consensus were:(i) Identifying Regional to local Impacts of ACC on the hydroclimate in RHP basins,(ii) Quantifying uncertainty by using CEOP data infrastructure,(iii) Testing models and ACC scenarios by apply WEBS analysis techniques and(iv) Exploiting CEOP/RHP connections to local/basin scale model Centers to assist inACC work
In particular, initial conference calls have been held that focused on CEOP Hydrologic
Applications Project (HAP) and other CEOP fast track activities.
(3.1b) With regards to the “Fast Track” activities as mentioned above, a new strategy fororganizing the CEOP Conference Calls was proposed in November 2009. Per this strategy, theCEOP RHP and Reference Sites calls will be held once every 4 months for each of the threeregions (Europe-Africa, Americas, and Asia-Pacific). If needed, an ad-hoc focused call can bearranged in between the regular calls.
(3.1c) Loehrer advised the group that new mailing lists were created using the NCAR Mailman
service that with intention to facilitate the CEOP groups communication and material distribution.
The address for the Americas RHP and Reference Site group is: ceop-rs-americas@eol.ucar.edu
and include all the site representatives of American sites and RHPs. To add/remove a person
to/from the list, request should be made to Steve Williams or Petra Koudelova and Sam Benedict.
3.2 WCRP and GEWEX related issues(3.2a) Koike reported on the GEWEX SSG meeting in New Delhi, India in January. Hevoiced that the CEOP data component was very well acknowledged at the SSG meeting and inparticular the high quality and long-term reference site data was recognized as crucial for thescience and thus continuation of this CEOP activity was considered as highly desirable. Herdreiterated that at the 3 Annual CEOP Meeting in Melbourne in August 2009, CEOP took
commitment of developing 10-year dataset that is especially needed for climate projection
studies focusing on climate model uncertainties. The CEOP 10-year dataset should include in-situ
as well as satellite data and added will be data from other projects like the FLUXNET and IGBP
iLEAPS data. The goal for this year is to prepare the 10-year dataset for 10 sites selected among
CEOP and FLUXNET sites. In this respect, Koike advised the group that a request had been
sent to the FLUXNET community to nominate suitable sites.
It was emphasized that this task will require special effort on unifying the data format,
time interval, variable names, etc. and also to assure metadata interoperability. As the first step,
the data group has action A2 to nominate the suitable sites from the CEOP as well as FLUXNET
network.

In this context the representatives of the sites that had been in operation since CEOP
Phase 1 were asked for kind cooperation on this task. These include Meyers (CPPA-Bondville),
Williams (SGP, ARM sites), Thompson (Canadian sites), and Horta/Araujo (LBA sites).
(3.2b) Lettenmaier emphasized that in order to demonstrate benefits of the CEOP special dataarchives it would be desirable to undergo an external review process that would clearly show thevalue that is added to the collected data including reference site and satellite observations
through the CEOP data format unification and data integration efforts. This step is necessary forassuring an adequate incentive for funding agencies to continue to support the CEOP dataactivities. It was agreed that such external review was very important and reactivation of aninternational science and advisory group should be considered.
th(3.2c) The group was advised that the 4 CEOP Annual Meeting would be held as part of thend
2 Pan-GEWEX meeting that will take place in Seattle, USA, 23 – 27 August 2010. The CEOP
sessions will include two full-day CEOP sessions on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 August andone evening session on Thursday 26 August, while morning and afternoon of Thursday will bededicated to Panel interaction (including CEOP, GRP, and GMPP). Further information of themeeting including logistics details can be found at the meeting website at:
http://www.gewex.org/2010pangewex/home.html. The participants on the call were encouraged toconsider their participation in this event.
3.3 Overall status of the CEOP reference site data archive and related issues(3.3a) Loehrer provided updated overall status of the Americas reference sites that is copied
below in Attachment 1 and can also be accessed on the Internet at:
http://data.eol.ucar.edu/master_list/?project=CEOP/EOP-3/4.
(3.3b) Loehrer reiterated the ongoing action A3 on updating the site documentation/metadatathat all of the Reference site Managers and RHP Representatives were asked to undertake.
Namely, they should go on line to review all the documentation for their Reference sites that isavailable through the following web site: http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/ceop/dm/insitu/sites/
and to verify that it is complete and accurate and report necessary updates to Williams.
(3.3c) Loehrer also reiterated that the discussion in the CEOP model community and thedefinition of the scientific foci for the new CEOP period has resulted in the interest in / request for
additional data from the CEOP in-situ reference sites. This mainly covers three groups ofparameters: clouds, aerosol, and groundwater. It would be desirable if the Reference Site
Managers complete the survey and provide this information to the NCAR/EOL database. The online survey is located at: https://survey.ucar.edu/s?s=3003 and can be found through the DataManagement site at: http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/ceop/dm/questionnaires/.
4.

RHP and Reference Site Reports

4.1 LPB by Hugo Berbery(4.1a) Berbery reported that the LPB reference site Cruz Alta was working well and data werebeing collected. He reiterated that Debora Roberti, CPTEC, was nominated as the Cruz Alta site
representative for CEOP and would participate in these conference calls in future. Subsequently,
Debora Roberti has been included on the Americas RS and RHP mailing list.
Berbery also mentioned that CPTEC (Brazil) was strongly involved in the LPB activities,
in particular in the observational component.
(4.1b) An LPB meeting was scheduled in April 2010 and other reference sites in the LPB region
were to be discussed that may potentially be contributing to CEOP.

4.2 LBA by Horta, Araujo(4.2a) Horta reported that CPTEC had hired a new person on a full-time position for the LBA
reference site data processing that would start in March 2010. In addition, a new server has been
installed to enhance the capacities for reference site data procedures. The new person willaddress the comments from NCAR/EOL on the latest submissions as listed by Loehrer in theoverall status (Attachment 1) as soon as possible and will also send further datasets (flux and soildata).
(4.2b) Araujo reported that the Rondonia and Manaus site data were being checked and would
be dispatched to the CPTEC office in Cachoeira Paulista soon.
4.3 CPPA sites by Loehrer
Neither Tilden Meyers, nor Jin Huang were available for the call but Loehrer reported that there
had been a good progress in the CPPA associated sites data submissions, in particular sonde
data.

ATTACHMENT 1:

Overall status of the Americas sites

CPPA ARM SGP TWR data available through 2009.
CPPA ARM SGP SONDE data available through 2009.
CPPA Bondville SONDE data available through 2009.
CPPA Ft. Peck SONDE data available through 2009.
CPPA Oak Ridge SONDE data available through 2009.
Other ARM NSA SONDE data available through 2009.
Other ARM TWP SONDE data available through 2009.
The items that are currently in the midst of conversion or checking:- LBA Manaus SFC - completed checking of the 2005 data and sent issues to Horta.
- CPPA ARM SGP FLX, SFC and STM data through 2009 are in the process of being converted
into the CEOP formats.
- CPPA Bondville, Ft. Peck, Oak Ridge - Meyers is planning to submit data from these sites bythe end of February. Time period unclear.
- Other NSA SFC and TWR - are in the process of being converted into the CEOP formats.
- Other TWP SFC is in the process of being converted into the CEOP format.