1NOTES FROM THE FOURTH FORMAL COORDINATED ENERGY AND WATER-CYCLEOBSERVATIONS PROJECT (CEOP) TELECONFERENCE ON EUROPE-NEESPI-AFRICA REGIONAL
HYDROCLIMATE PROJECTS AND REFERENCE SITE ISSUES HELD ON
22 JANUARY 2010
Final DRAFT, 25 May 2010
1.

INTRODUCTION

The 4th Europe-NEESPI-Africa RHP and Reference Sites Teleconference related to the Coordinated Energyand Water-Cycle Observations Project (CEOP) took place on Friday 22 January at 13:00 UTC.
The issues that were discussed on the subject conference call included:(i)(ii)(iii)(iv)

CEOP at the GEWEX Science Steering Group Mtg;
Scheduling for Future CEOP Europe-NEESPI-Africa Reference Site Conference Calls;
Overview of all site data at CEOP Reference Site Data Archive;
RHP/Reference Site data providers/managers reports;

Participants
The participants were:
Toshio Koike
Steve Williams
Fred Bosveld
Frank Beyrich
Philippe Drobinski
Pasha Groisman
Esko Kyrö
Timo Ryyppo
Sam Benedict
Petra Koudelova

Tokyo, Japan, CEOP Co-Chair & representing JMA
Boulder, Colorado, USA; Representing CEOP Data Management
The Netherlands, BALTEX Cabauw site representative
Lindenberg, Germany, BALTEX Lindenberg site representative
France, HyMeX Representative
Representing NEESPI RHPFinland; FMI representative
Sodankylä, Finland ; Sodankylä site manager
San Diego, California, USA; CEOP International Coordination Function
Tokyo, Japan; CEOP International Coordination FunctionDrs Hans-Joerg Isemer (Representing BALTEX RHP and CEOP Data Management) and Charles Wrench(UK, Chilbolton site representative) responded to the announcements but were not available for the call.
Nevertheless, the BALTEX RHP update was provided by Dr. Frank Beyrich and Dr. Wrench provided awritten update on the Chilbolton site in advance. Dr. Thierry Lebel (Representing AMMA RHP) was notavailable for the call.
2.

NEXT CONFERENCE CALL

Per a new strategy for the organization of CEOP RHP and Reference Site calls that was developed
thin November 2009, these calls will be held once in every 4 months. Accordingly, the next, 5 CEOP
Europe-NEESPI-Africa RHP and Reference Sites Teleconference is proposed to take place on Tuesday
11 May 2010, at 13:00 UTC. Koudelova/Benedict have the action (A1) to inform the group of the detailsof the next call nearer to the time of the call and to coordinate the origination of the call (action A1a).

3.

CEOP AND CEOP DATA GROUP GENERAL ISSUES

3.1 Opening(3.1a) Benedict reiterated the main items of interest to the participants that came out of the CEOP Third
Annual meeting, held from 19-21 August 2009 at Melbourne, Australia. He noted that efforts 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 tothe WCRP/GEWEX Legacy document to develop a draft of the initial CEOP Synthesis Document by theend of October 2009, with submission set for early 2010.

2(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 thisconsensus 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 in ACC 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) Koike informed the group that CEOP Co-Chairs and International Coordinator would represent
CEOP at the upcoming GEWEX SSG meeting in India and pointed out that the CEOP integrated dataset
including the in-situ data was one of the key CEOP deliverables and thus reference site timely submissions
are requested and highly appreciated.
(3.1c) With regards to the “Fast Track” activities as mentioned above, a new strategy for organizing theCEOP Conference Calls was proposed in November 2009. Per this strategy, the CEOP RHP andReference Sites calls will be held once every 4 months for each of the three regions (Europe-Africa,Americas, and Asia-Pacific). If needed, an ad-hoc focused call can be arranged in between the regular calls.
(3.1d) Williams 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 Europe- Africa RHP and Reference Site group is: ceop-rs-europeafrica@eol.ucar.edu and include all
the site representatives of European, NEESPI, and African sites. To add/remove a person to/from the list,request should be made to Steve Williams or Petra Koudelova and Sam Benedict.

4.

RHP and Reference Site Reports

4.1 Summary status of the reference site archive at NCAR/EOL(4.1a) Williams introduced the current status of the CEOP reference site data archive for the EuropeNEESPI-Africa region, pointing out new submissions by the Sodankylae site.
(4.1b) Williams further reiterated that it would be desirable to update the metadata information ofindividual sites and asked the site representatives to review the information that is available through theData Management website at: http://www.eol.ucar.edu/projects/ceop/dm/insitu/sites/ and update it ifnecessary (action A2).
4.2 HyMeX RHP report by Philippe Drobinski(4.2a) Drobinski reported that their priority now was to finalize the HyMeX data format for CEOP from the3 nominated sites in Israel and Italy. For that purpose, he suggested that a separate call be organized thatwould include the HyMeX site representatives and CEOP data management leaders and would focus onpractical issues of data preparation for the CEOP data archive. Such call took place on 2 March 2010 andthe Minutes of the discussion is included in the Attachment 1 below.
(4.2b) Drobinski further voiced that the 4th HyMeX Workshop would take place in Bologna, Italy from 8through 10 June 2010, at the CRN facilities and that it would be highly desirable if CEOP representatives
attend this workshop in order to learn about the full breadth of the HyMeX activities and identify further
areas for closer collaboration between CEOP and HyMeX. In particular, HyMeX is very active in the WCRPCORDEX program and has a strong modeling focus. It was agreed that CEOP would participate in thisimportant event.
4.3 BALTEX: Cabauw by Fred Bosveld
Bosveld reported that the 2007 – 2008 datasets were available at their database (http://www.cesardatabase.nl/Welcome.do) and would be submitted to the CEOP archive in the near future. He advised the3group of this web-based database system created by The Cesar (Cabauw experimental site for atmosphericresearch) Consortium where the data is in the NetCDF format following the CF convention. In addition,
Bosveld mentioned that they were cooperating with the Wageningen University and Research Center toimprove the soil moisture observation method.
4.4 BALTEX: Lindenberg by Frank Beyrich
Beyrich reported that the Lindenberg datasets for 2008 were being finalized and would besubmitted by March 2010. The raw radiosonde data for 2008 have been submitted to the NCAR archive andshould be made available through the CEOP Data Gateway soon. The Lindenberg site has been
experiencing “real” winter conditions with continuing freezing temperatures around –10 degree Celsius andcontinuous snowcover up to 20 cm that are rather rare to this area.
4.5 BALTEX: Sodankylä by Esko Kyro and Timo Ryyppo
Kyro and Ryyppo reported that the surface meteorological datasets and radiosonde datasets for2004 – 2008 had been completed and submitted to the NCAR archive. The soil and flux datasets are being
processed and would be submitted in the near future. This important contribution was acknowledged andappreciated by the group.
4.6 NEESPI by Pasha Groisman
Groisman reported that a great effort was being made to collect various permafrost data in theNorthern Russia of the NEESPI region and that the data was being submitted to the Cooperative Arctic
Data and Information Service (CADIS) of NCAR that supports the Arctic Observing Network (AON). Thecontact point for this data is Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky. In addition, NEESPI has established closer
collaboration with the local Hydrometeorological Center of Russia that may result in provision of further data
including tower observations. This activity is led by the German NEESPI group.
4.7 Others: Chilbolton by Charles Wrench
Wrench reported in writing that progress was being made with enhancements to their flux
measurement set up at Chilbolton and that this work should be completed within the next 4-6 weeks.
4.8 AMMA
Benedict voiced that negotiations with the AMMA community had advanced and CEOP had
received a formal letter expressing AMMA’s interest in contributing their data to the CEOP database. Inaddition, the AMMA data is being used for CEOP studies through the AMMA data gateway.
5.

CLOSING

Koike acknowledged the participants for attending the call and providing their valuable contributions,comments and suggestions. The call was adjourned at 14:15 UTC.

ATTACHMENT 1

Notes from the special call on the HyMeX data issues on 2 March 2010(see below)

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