NOTES FROM THE EIGHTH FORMAL GEWEX HYDROCLIMATOLOGY PANEL (GHP)(formerly CEOP) TELECONFERENCE ON AMERICAS REGIONAL HYDROCLIMATEPROJECTS AND REFERENCE SITE ISSUES HELD ON
15 FEBRUARY 2011
First DRAFT, 20 April 2011
1.

INTRODUCTIONth

The 8 Americas RHP and Reference Sites Teleconference related to the GEWEXHydroclimatology Panel (GHP, formerly CEOP) took place on Tuesday 15 February 2011 at
20:00 UTC.
The issues that were discussed on the subject conference call included:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)

CEOP – GHP transitions: Second Co-Chair; New RHP criteria; Development a new RHP in
the North America
Overview of all site data at CEOP Reference Site Data Archive;
RHP/Reference Site data providers/managers reports;

Participants
Erin Thompson
Luiz Horta
Mike Ek
Steve Williams
Scot Loehrer
Sam Benedict
Petra Koudelova
2.

(BERMS Representative)(LBA reference site data manager)(Model Output group representative)(CEOP Reference Site Data Archive manager)(CEOP Reference Site Data Archive manager)(GHP International Coordination Function)(GHP International Coordination Function)

NEXT CONFERENCE CALLth

The next, 9 GHP Americas RHP and Reference Sites Teleconference is proposed to takeplace on Tuesday 14 June 2011 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).
3.

GHP AND CEOP DATA GROUP GENERAL ISSUES

3.1 WCRP and GEWEX related issuesnd(3.1a) Benedict reiterated the main outcomes of the 2 Pan-GEWEX meeting that was held in
Seattle, USA, in August 2010 (http://www.gewex.org/2010pangewex/home.html). These included
a number of decisions, recommendations and actions specifically associated with former CEOP
as well as a set of general (Pan-GEWEX) actions for all the Panels. The main changes that havetaken place recently with respect to CEOP included:
1. The SSG accepted Prof Toshio Koike’s decision to step down as Co-Chair of CEOP
effective at the close of the PGM at Seattle. This action, followed Dr Ron Stewart’s
resignation, which was taken at the close of the SSG meeting at New Delhi India, 25-29
January 2010,
2. Dr Dennis Lettenmaier was named Co-Chair of CEOP to replace Dr Stewart, effective at
the end of the SSG meeting at India (25-29 January 2010),
3. There was a search team being organized to find a Co-Chair to work with Dr Lettenmaier.
4. The SSG agreed to change the name of CEOP to the GEWEX Hydroclimatology Panel(GHP), effective immediately following the end of the PGM.

Also a new set of criteria for GEWEX RHPs was proposed at the meeting that were circulated
prior to the last call and all RHPs were asked to review this set.
(3.1b) Benedict advised the group that consequently after the PGM, Dr. Jan Polcher –Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS),
Jussieu, Paris, France – had been nominated a new Co-Chair of GHP and had accepted thisfunction. Dr. Polcher attended the GHP Europe-Africa Conference Call on 18 January and at thattime introduced his interests in activities covered by GHP and stressed out in particular theimportance of high quality long-term in-situ observations that are essential for WCRP/GEWEX
science. He pointed out that individual sites on which RHPs are built up needed to be maintained
and these difficult tasks should be supported by the GEWEX community. Polcher alsoemphasized that both (i) long term records and (ii) intensive, comprehensive short term
observation campaigns are necessary and that crucial is rigorous data quality assurance withappropriate site instrumentation documentation. He voiced that establishing of a kind of a list of“good practices” for reference site observation would be desirable and also named the BSRN
sites as a good example of such practices.
Polcher further advised the group that the new GHP panel members (see ATTACHMENT 1
below) would meet at the occasion of the EGU meeting in Vienna in April and they would discussa new organization of the Panel that would be suitable for the new directions identified at the
PGM. In addition, he mentioned that the first meeting of the new GHP was proposed be held inautumn in Europe.
(3.1c) One of the members on the new GHP panel is Dr. Michael Ek, who has been actively
involved in the GHP/CEOP Model Output activities, representing the NCEP group, as well as in
the GLASS benchmarking efforts. Dr. Ek attended the call and advised the group of their model
validation and benchmarking activities that require continuous high quality reference site data. Ek
acknowledged the importance and high value of the GHP/CEOP reference site dataset for these
their activities and appreciated special efforts of the reference site data providers as well as data
management team. He also advised the group of the Protocol for Analysis of Land Surface
models (PALS), which is a web application for evaluating land surface models and the observed
data sets used to test them. It provides data for particular modelling experiments as well as awide range of diagnostic performance measures once model output created from these data is
uploaded. As such, it has two broad categories of users: those who provide observed data sets
and are interested in receiving feedback about how models use or interpret their data, and; those
who run models using this data and use PALS as a model analysis tool. The system is available
at: www.pals.unsw.edu.au/.
In this context, Benedict reiterated that with regards to the changes resulting from the PanGEWEX meeting discussions, the data collecting and reporting scheme may need some
restructuring, however the urgent need for a high quality data as a basis for scientific activities
that are key for the GEWEX Imperatives was confirmed at the Pan GEWEX Meeting and thereference site data activities are supposed to continue in a certain manner. The in-situ data fromthe CEOP reference sites were acknowledged and studies based on these data were presented
at the meeting.
(3.1d) Benedict also informed the group that recently, the CLIVAR Variability of the African
Climate System (VACS) panel had express interest to establish a closer links to GEWEX since,
both from a scientific and administrative point of view, the VACS effort could potentially evolve
into a joint CLIVAR GEWEX activity. Both, the VACS community and the GEWEX SSG Chair,
Kevin Trenberth, agreed that GHP would be most appropriate place for VACS links in GEWEX.
Accordingly, it has been proposed and agreed, that representatives of the VACS community
would be invited to attend the GHP RHP and Reference Site Calls, in particular the ones thatinvolve Europe and Africa. Koudelova and Benedict have action A2 to assure therepresentatives of the VACS panel are properly informed of the such next calls.

(3.1e) After the call, at the beginning of March, Williams advised all the CEOP/GHP referencesite groups by via email about the development of the situation at NCAR/EOL, where the CEOP
reference site archive is hosted. With respect to the transition process from CEOP to GHP andenvisioned GHP foci, the NOAA’s Climate Projects Office (CPO), who has funded this CEOP
activity since 2001, has directed EOL to complete these activities by September 2011. No
additional funds have been allocated to EOL beyond October 2011 to provide any support to
CEOP/GHP. Accordingly, the NCAR EOL team has decided to process and follow up on all thereference site data that would be submitted to them by 31 March 2011 and a requested all
the CEOP reference site data providers to consider this deadline to complete their submissions
as much as possible. The copy of this note and request is attached below (Attachment 2).
(3.1f) Benedict further informed the group that a new RHP was being formed in the Northern
American continent, involving the USA, Canada, and potentially Mexico. The proposed RHP,
Terrestrial Regional North American Hydro-Climate Experiment (TRACE) (http://www.tracerhp.org/), envisions an interdisciplinary, international, and interagency effort to make significant
contributions to continental and finer scale hydro-climate science and solutions. The TRACE
objective is to entrain, integrate, and coordinate the vast array of interdisciplinary observational
and prediction resources available to significantly advance skill in predicting and managing
changes in North American water resources, as an integral part of the global climate system. The
TRACE mission is to measure and predict North American energy and water variations, trends,
and extremes through improved observations and prediction, thereby providing the scientificunderpinnings of future climate services. The initial discussion workshop will be held on 18 – 20
April 2011, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA.
(3.1g) It was reiterated that a 10-Year Dataset project had been initiated in response to theclimate modeling community need of a high quality observation data of a sufficient length forevaluation of climate models under the CMIP5 project and quantification of model projections
uncertainties. This activity was proposed by the WCRP Observation and Assimilation Panelrd(WOAP) and is compliant with the CEOP commitment taken at the 3 Annual CEOP Meeting in
Melbourne in August 2009 to develop the CEOP 10-year dataset as well as with the GEWEX
post 2013 Imperatives (http://www.gewex.org/2010pangewex/Draft_Imperatives.pdf). The
WOAP suggested activity is envisioned as a collaborative effort of a broader observation andclimate modeling communities including GEWEX/CEOP, LandFlux-EVAL, GSWP, AsiaFlux, fromthe observation side. The targeted dataset will consists of in-situ as well as satellite
observations from multiple providers including GHP (CEOP), FLUXNET, AsiaFlux, iLEAPS.
The 10-Year Dataset project was discussed with the LandFlux-EVAL, FLUXNET, AsiaFlux, and
GSWP representatives at the occasion of the HESSS2 Meeting in Tokyo in June andsubsequently a White Paper was developed and submitted for discussion at the Pan-GEWEX
meeting in August. The White Paper is now under consideration by WCRP (WOAP) and GEWEX
communities. Further details should be known after the GHP Panel meeting in April.
4.

RHP and Reference Site Reports

4.1 Overall status of the CEOP reference site data archive and related issues
Williams provided overall updated status of the Americas reference sites that can also
be accessed on the Internet at:
http://data.eol.ucar.edu/master_list/?project=CEOP/EOP-3/4.
4.2 ARM sites by Steve Williams(4.2a) Williams reported that all the ARM sites data including SGP, NSA, and WTP werecomplete up to 2009. Nevertheless, he reiterated that there had been substantial changes interms of individual station locations within the SGP reference site (number of stations had been
shut down and new would be installed in 2011) in order to better fit to higher model resolutions.

This needs to be considered when if the SGP site is nominated for contribution to the 10-YDP. It
may require that a subset of stations is selected that have been in operation at the same location
since the beginning of the CEOP (or 10-YDP) period.
4.3 BERMS sites by Erin Thompson(4.3a) Thompson reported that the three BERMS sited continued to operate and the teamconsidered submitting data up to 2010 to GHP/CEOP. Currently, the data up to 2006 areavailable through the NCAR archive and the 2007 – 2010 data will be submitted at once withinseveral months. Firstly, the meteorological data will be provided, the flux data may take more time.
4.4 LBA by Luiz Horta(4.4a) Horta reported that the Manaus data up to 2009 had been prepared by the Manaus teamand would be sent to Horta in the near future. The set of format conversion routines has beendeveloped and will be applied at the data center in Cachoeira Paulista. Horta also reiterated that
there had been certain updates in Manaus. The site equipment is monitored on-line, providing
thus immediate information on the status of sensors. In addition, a data archive center is underconsideration at CPTEC, that would be tele-connected to the observation sites and thus the data
would be transmitted to the center on a real time basis. The data center may be implemented in2011.
(4.4b) Horta also mentioned that Dr. Araujo and one data expert of the Manaus site had moved
to other positions and thus new personnel may be required for the facility. Nevertheless, Dr.
Araujo is still supporting the LBA on a part-time basis.
(4.4c) Horta further voiced that recent political changes had not negatively influenced thegovernmental support of LBA activities (so far). At the same time, CPTEC is undergoingremarkable changes including technical upgrades as well as appointing a new director, which
may have some effect on some of its activities.
4.5 CPPA sites by Tilden Meyers (written report)
Wintertime CO2 fluxes are being corrected for known temperature affects due to heating of thesensor and thus giving erroneous CO2 fluxes.
We are also completing our study of flux underestimation by sonic anemometers. All these errors
are being tested and corrected in our "final" data output. It has taken some time, along with thegap filling process, but we will feel comfortable with having produced the best most accurate
fluxes possible. The correction procedure will change some numbers by as much as 15 20%. However instead of incremental changes, we will be making one final output, with allnecessary corrections, which we will be able to defend experimentally. We plan to complete thisbefore we go back into the field in the spring (April).
We will be sending data to Scot and Steve, then, both historical and current. These are all issues
that have come about the last year, and it has taken some time to complete some field work inorder to make the necessary corrections.

ATTACHMENT 1 List of GHP Panel Members

Last
Name

First
Name

Berbery

Hugo

Ek

MichaelAffiliation
Research in the Dept. of
Atmospheric and Oceanic
Science of the University of
Maryland(UMD)
National Centers forEnvironmental
Prediction/Environmental
Modeling Center(NCEP/EMC), NOAACountry

Gender

Age

US

Male

?

US

Male

?

Harding

RichardDirector of the
Biogeochemistry
programme at the NERC
Centre for Ecology andHydrology (CEH)

Kanae

ShinjiroTokyo Institute ofTechnology

Japan

Male

39

Vincenzo

Director of Research at the
Istituto di Scienze
dell’Atmosfera e del Clima(ISAC) of CNR

Italy

Male

53

Levizanni

UK

Male

?

Expertise- Diagnostic and modeling studies of regional climate
variability focused on the American monsoon systems and thehydrologic cycle- Role of surface conditions on land surface-atmosphereinteractions and their relation to the water and energy cycles- Land hydrology,- Boundary-layer physics- Land-atmosphere interaction- Associated modeling and observational data analysis- Arctic hydrology, including mass and energy balances ofsnow and ice surface;- Large-scale hydrological modelling;- Global climate modelling;- Land surface/atmosphere interactions (measuring andmodeling fluxes of water and CO2 from land surfaces)- Global water cycle,- Water resources,- Sustainability,- Flood and drought,- Climate change,- Asian monsoon hydrology- Satellite multispectral studies of cloud top structure;- Cloud physics studies of severe storms using radar andsatellite techniques;- Satellite rainfall estimations using combined VIS/IR and
MW techniques;- Earth radiation budget definition using satellite and groundbased instruments;- Development of mesoscale analysis techniques including
remote sensing data;- Studies of long-distance aerosol transport using satellite
instruments

NunesAna

Professor, Dept. of
Meteorology, Institute of
Geosciences, Federal
University of
Rio de Janeiro

WalkerJeff

Prof. in the Department ofCivil Engineering, Monash
University

Xiaodong

International Center for
Climate and Environmental
Sciences (ICCES),
Institute of AtmosphericPhysics (IAP), Chinese
Academy of Sciences

Zeng

BrazilFemaleReceived
PhD in2002

Australia

Male

Received
PhD in1999

Male

Received
PhD in1998

China- Precipitation- Recent projects include: “The SIO Regional Spectral Model
Contribution to the North American Regional Climate Change
Assessment Program,” “Evaluating the Role of Snow Coveron Seasonal to Inter-annual Predictability of Temperature andPrecipitation” (NASA),
NASA Energy and Water cycle Studies (NEWS) Project“Global Water andEnergy Budgets”- Environmental sensing;- Earth system modeling;- Optimal convergence of model predictions with observations
through data assimilation- Spatial and temporal response of vegetation distribution to
global climate change, and the impact of vegetation on global
energy, water, and carbon balances

ATTACHMENT 2
Message from Steve Williams, CEOP Data Management Co-Chair and the in-situ archive
Chair, on the completion of the CEOP in-situ data activity at NCAR EOL. (March 2011)
All,
NCAR’s Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) has been supporting CEOP in a number of areas
including the planning and coordination of CEOP Data Management activities through meetings,
teleconferences, and documents. Primary support provided by EOL has been the collection,
processing, Quality Assurance (QA), archival, and dissemination of CEOP Reference Sitedata/metadata, and EOL currently integrates and hosts this long-term archive for the scientificcommunity. NOAA’s Climate Projects Office (CPO) has funded this activity since 2001, and withthe recent transition from CEOP to GHP, CPO has directed EOL to complete these CEOP
activities by September 2011. No additional funds have been allocated to EOL beyond October
2011 to provide any support to CEOP/GHP.
In review of the existing budget and estimating the level of effort to complete these activities, EOL
plans to collect available CEOP Reference Site data through March 2011. At that time, EOL willcomplete the processing and QA of all “in-house” holdings and add these data to the final archive.
EOL will continue to maintain the CEOP data management web pages through September 2011and provide access to the Reference Site data and metadata. During this period, EOL will also
continue to work closely with the other CEOP Data Centers (satellite and model output) as well as
individual Reference Sites. It is expected that based on the CEOP data policy, processed data
(through 2009) will be added from as many contributing Reference Sites as possible. So, it isimportant that you submit your processed quality assured Reference Site data through 2009 to
EOL prior to 31 March 2011 so that these data can be reviewed and included in the final archive.
A lot of effort has gone into the planning, design, and development of the Reference Site
database over the past 10 years, and it has provided a high quality resource and long-term
legacy to the climate community. The ability to utilize these climatologically diverse Reference
Site data (surface, soils, tower, and flux) all in a common format with uniform QA and user
friendly interface for data access, has greatly enhanced scientific research as evidenced by data
download metrics, publications, and personal correspondence. So, on behalf of CEOP, I thankyou very much for all your contributions and participation over the years in these efforts. It is
important to recognize the need to continue contribution of data to networks as appropriate, whichallow open access for the broader scientific community (such as Fluxnet). Coordination of data
within these networks may be undertaken in support of GEWEX Imperatives, through GHP in due
course.
It is possible that there may be a few additional teleconferences beyond March to work out any
remaining details related to the archive completion. Feel free to contact me should you have any
questions.
Regards,
Steve