VERY, VERY ROUGH DRAFT NOTES FROM CEOP KEY PERSONSCONFERENCE CALL 29 MAY 2008
STATUS REPORTING
CPPA+ Jin Huang:
As I mentioned in the opening part of the call we got very nice updates from Jin on theCPPA where she mentioned the ’08 priorities that included the Local
Projects/Experiments aspect and the Regional Modeling component that you are acontributor to and then the Drought study which includes some land surface hydrology
and she noted also that there was an aerosol/cloud study topic being emphasized. Theseall sounded great as far as their synergy with CEOP. Jin further noted that the ’09 topics
also mesh well with CEOP the call will go out end of June or early July withpredictability (seasonal), extremes, and even some hydrological applications inmountainous regions seems to fit very well with the emphasis of these sciences in CEOP,
namely CEOP Extremes and CEOP HE. Jin also provided some very helpful commentswith respect to other points on the agenda of the call.
Data Management+ Steve Williams:
Steve Williams gave a great summary of the situation relative to CEOP DataManagement by pointing out that there was a new CEOP DM Web Page that had beenlaunched recently and then noting that the European Reference site managers had met
recently and agreed to move ahead with provision of data to CEOP even going back to2005 to ensure that there would be a continuous record from the Coordinated Enhanced
Observing Period EOP time period. Steve noted though that we needed to get this partof the CEOP community better engaged which we discussed later in the call. Stevementioned that his group was sending out a questionnaire to all site managers that wasrelated to cloud, aerosol and other ancillary data that they may be collecting and which
could become part of the CEOP database or linked to. Meta-data from new sites is also
something that Steve noted was important for us to mobilize this component of CEOP toprovide. Finally, he mentioned that there was a need to clarify or at least better
communicate the exact status of the CEOP Satellite Data Archive. In this context, weagreed that we needed a CEOP Satellite Data Status conference call with Reps fromNASA, NOAA, ESA and JAXA. Petra and I are going to follow-up on that. Toshio also
agreed to finalize an earlier action to provide metrics related to the CEOP Satellite dataarchive in response to an earlier request by the GEWEX SSG for CEOP to provide
metrics related to all its data archives
LPB+ Hugo Berbery
Hugo told us about meetings that have been held within the LPB framework recently, one
in Paraguay and one in the USA. Both were productive; the first one was held at Itaipu,
the largest Hydropower Plant of the Americas. During the meeting it was agreed toestablish a Framework Agreement to promote the collaborations between Itaipu and LPB,
including the possibility of installing instruments in Itaipu’s secure areas. The othermeeting was held in Boulder (USA) with the aim of interesting USA scientists in getting
involved in an LPB field campaign that is being planned for 2011. Hugo mentioned that

two flux towers are expected to be installed in the LPB region that might be able tocontribute to CEOP. We agreed to undertake discussion of this in the context of a CEOP
Data Managers Conference call (see below). In this context, it is recognized the need toidentify a person at CPTEC that can act as LPB data manager and with whom CEOP caninteract. From the monsoon perspective Hugo reported on the VAMOS annual meeting
held recently. He noted that there is good synergy between the cross cutting themes thatVAMOS is discussing and those that CEOP has under consideration: anthropogenic
climate change, modeling and extremes.
Hugo also added good comments and suggestions on other aspects of the agenda,
particularly related to timelines that show more about how CEOP is and plans to meet its
commitments as set out in the CEOP SIP. His comments paralleled very closely thebreakout that Toshio and you had envisioned for how to organize and manage CEOP.
MANAGEMENT/ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORKManagement Grouping, CEOP Web Page, September meeting, Conference callmechanism+ All participants:
In that context, we all agreed that we have a very active modeling group and haveestablished conference calls with that part of the CEOP community that includes a rather
large number of participants that call then spawns smaller calls on focused topics. To
follow that paradigm we then felt it was necessary to establish a similar grouping of theRHP representatives (8) with the science crosscut leaders (4) and the regional climate
study heads (4). Action is on Petra and I to come up with the right list of participants andto organize a conference call with these folks in the near future.
To handle the specific data issues such as the one above related to getting data from newflux towers in LPB as well as getting data from sites in the USA, South America andEurope we agreed that we needed to do a call with key CEOP Data Management leaders
and the actual CEOP reference site managers. This goes beyond discussing these matterswith just the RHP reps since many sites are now outside the RHP’s. This led us toconclude we need such a call with a group of key persons for each region including
Europe, Asia/Australia, NA and SA. Action is on Petra and I to come up with names andtiming for such calls to be accomplished hopefully before the September meeting in
Geneva. Steve will help us with that planning.
That was the jist of the call as I discussed with you on the phone. We also thought that
we had some special cases that needed conference calls to clarify including the satellite
data matter as noted above and some type of communication with work being done in
Africa including especially AMMA.
Other topics related to the CEOP Home Page Web site. We discussed all of your written
points and those we received from others plus those we agreed on in realtime during thecall. The result is that Petra will act on the conclusions we reached and make changes asappropriate and hopefully release the Page formally to the broader community by earlynext week.
We have now found sufficient hotel rooms in Geneva to go ahead with our plans for themeeting there the week of 15 September 2008. In that context Toshio noted that we needto think of the overall strategic approach for the meeting to include (i) a comprehensive
over view of the status and near future plans of each aspect of CEOP; (ii) develop andagree on our minimum successes up to now including our data, scientific achievements
and deliverables; (iii) Kick-off our full blown data archiving scheme for getting data
flowing and readily available to the broader community from each element of CEOP, as
we have now broken it down, (Modeling; RHP/crosscuts/regional studies; and Referencesites and including satellite data).
With these three elements as our CEOP
Management/Organizational framework we would also identify a mechanism forestablishing a written status reporting scheme for each component using the template of
the GEWEX Reports that we fill out each year for the SSG only this time we would
enforce our own system of quarterly reporting that will come out of the Conference Callprocess we will be introducing over the next several months.
Finally we agreed that the WebEx scheme for setting up these types of Conference Calls
was less expensive and just as convenient as the previous method and so we would stickwith it for the foreseeable future.