The GEWEX Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP) and the GEWEX Hydrometeorology Panel (GHP) were merged into the CoordinatedEnergy and Water Cycle Observations Project (CEOP) in 2007. This is a Special CEOP issue of the GEWEX Newsletter, which will also serve as the
CEOP Newsletter in cooperation with the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).

Vol. 18, No. 3

August 2008

CEOP LEGACY AND CONTRIBUTIONS
Ghassem R. Asrar, PhD
Director, World Climate Research Programme
World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the contributions of The Global
Energy and Water Cycle Experiment(GEWEX), the Coordinated Enhanced
Observing Period, which is now partof the Coordinated Energy and water
cycle Observations Project (CEOP),
and other affiliated research projects towards advancing our knowledge of water and energy cycle processes throughobservations, modelling, synthesis and analysis of the state of scientific understanding during the past decades. The articles presented
in this special issue of GEWEX News reflect clearly on the transformational changes in our understanding and the approaches we aretaking to further investigate the role of the water and energy cyclein the climate system, and, in turn, the impacts of climate change
and variability on the water and energy resources. This evolution in
our scientific knowledge and research approaches would not havebeen possible without CEOP’s unique contributions to efforts
already underway in GEWEX.
I recall the birth of Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period at the
beginning of the millennium, based on the urgent need to bring
together all relevant sources of observations (i.e., remotely sensed
and in-situ) with models to make greater progress on understanding and modelling the global energy and water cycle, with a majoremphasis on regional and seasonal scales. CEOP mission objectives
have evolved significantly during this relatively short period, froman observation and model data integration function to contribuContents
CEOP Legacy and Contributions
John Roads: In Memoriam
The Uncertainty of Global Analyses
Available Data from the Inter-Continental
Transferability Study (ICTS)
Experimental Drought Monitoring for Africa
CEOP High Elevations Kick-Off Meeting
16–17 April 2008, Padua, Italy
CEOP Extremes Workshop
21–23 May 2008, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
New Glass Chair
Status of the JAXA Distributed Data
Integration System
CEOP Satellite Data Gateway Opens

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3
4
6
7
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tions to science and society. Since January 2007, CEOP also accepted a new role in promoting research on the use of model prediction ensembles and associated statistics and comparing them withobservations, and making these results available to other researchers
for further analysis and use. CEOP promotes the use of coupledclimate models to study region-specific climate, weather, and water
resources problems, especially in climatically sensitive regions of the
Earth (e.g., high latitudes and elevations). A major scientific effort
is focused on reducing uncertainties associated with the climaticallysensitive and key hydrological processes in these regions, and theirproper representation in the climate system models. CEOP has also
devoted considerable efforts and resources to assemble and makeavailable sustained regional reference observations of key meteorological and radiation parameters, together with analysis tools andmethods, standards for archiving, distributing, analysis, and visualization of these observations for scientists around the world.
CEOP contributions to GEWEX are highly supportive of the
WCRP mission objectives, to “support climate-related decision
making and planning adaptation to climate change by developing
science required to improve: (1) climate predictions; (2) understanding of human influence on climate; and (3) use this scientific knowledge in an increasing range of practical applications of
direct relevance, benefit and value to society” (WCRP Strategic
Framework 2005–2015). This is also demonstrated very well by
the seminal contributions that WCRP-sponsored scientists andprograms/projects make to international environmental assessments such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
As we consider the future with the heightened attention to climatechange and variability and its impacts on every aspect of world-widesocial, economic, and infrastructure areas, the need for improved
understanding of the Earth’s climate system and its associated variability and changes, especially at regional and seasonal scales, withgreater emphasis on availability of the resulting knowledge and information, is crucial. WCRP and its associated projects, especially
GEWEX, CEOP and their associated network of scientific leadership, are well-positioned to respond to the emerging scientific challenges and opportunities in this decade and beyond. WCRP takes
pride in CEOP’s past accomplishments, and looks forward withgreat anticipation to their future contributions towards furthering our knowledge of the complex Earth’s water and energy cycle,
and to make this knowledge available through its network of partnerships (e.g., the Earth System Science Partnership, and World
Meteorological Organization programs, such as, Regional Climate
Outlook Forums and Regional Climate Centers) to decision makers
and managers for the purpose of managing the risks associated withclimate variability and change on extreme events such as droughts,
floods, and monsoons, and their impact on water resource availability and distribution worldwide.

IN MEMORIAM• Dr. JOHN OWEN ROADS •20 January 1950 - 21 June 2008
John Roads, Research
Professor at the Universityof California, San Diego,
Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO), Co-Chair of
the GEWEX CoordinatedEnergy and Water Cycle Observations Project (CEOP),
and former Chair of the
GEWEX Hydrometeorology
Panel, died on Saturday, 21 June, following a
2-year battle with leukemia.
John’s passing marks the loss of not just a leading climate scientist but also of a dear friend andcolleague who had a special gift for reaching out
to other disciplines, individuals, and students toconvey his vision and achieve success. His driveand commitment to the goals and objectives hehelped define for GEWEX and CEOP remained
strong up to the point where he was physicallyunable to continue his work. We are fortunate tohave known John and will miss him deeply.
A trust fund has been established in John’s name,which will enable SIO graduate students to attend
climate science conferences. Donations should
be made out to “UC Regents” with a reference tothe “John Roads Memorial Scholarship fund” andcan be mailed to: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., # 0210
La Jolla, CA 92093-0210.

common framework (spatio-temporal gridding) to facilitate their comparison with observations and their use in
CEOP science activities. The resulting homogenization of
the global model data is termed the Multi-model Analysis
for CEOP (MAC).
Each model data contribution was provided in GRIB1 binary format, with few other similarities. The spatial grids
were different, and the output data resolutions ranged
from relatively fine to coarse (roughly from 0.4 to almost
2 degrees). In addition, the timing of the contributions
was quite variable between models. In this first version of
the MAC, a single consistent time series of data was developed from each system’s data closest to the analysis time.
Another significant complication was the occasion of
missing data, where some centers’ data was not completein time and could not be recovered. Also, a few systems
did not extrapolate meteorological data to pressure higher
than the surface values, opting instead for undefined values
in high elevations. A full description of the procedures tohomogenize the data is posted online at http://gmao.gsfc.
nasa.gov/research/modeling/validation/ceop.php.
The resulting MAC data is available at 6-hourly intervals, daily and monthly means over the 27-month period,
with a total of 48 surface and upper-air meteorological,
flux, and column-integrated variables, in both NetCDF
and GRIB1. An ensemble mean and standard deviationof the data has also been produced. In development andvalidation of a data assimilation or reanalysis system, there
are many sources of model data for comparisons (such as
the existing long reanalyses from the National Centers forEnvironmental Prediction (NCEP), the European Centre
for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and theJapanese Meteorological Agency (JMA)). However, eachof these has known and likely some unknown deficiencies.
So, the MAC can provide a range of analyses for comparison. In addition, we might also hypothesize that, because

THE UNCERTAINTY OF GLOBAL ANALYSES
Michael G. Bosilovich1, David Mocko1,2,
and John O. Roads3
NASA GSFC Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Greenbelt, MD, USA; 2SAIC, Greenbelt, MD, USA; 3Scripps Institute for
Oceanography, San Diego, CA, USA
1

Early in the formulation of the Coordinated Enhanced
Observing Period Phase 1 (CEOP1), the global modellinggroups were planning the collection of analysis and forecast data from many systems to support CEOP1 scienceand also to define the envelope of uncertainty in the operational analyses (Bosilovich and Lawford, 2002). Data
contributions from seven international numerical weather
prediction centers or modelling research centers (with one
center providing two separate models) resulted in eightsystems with global fields for the CEOP1 period (Oct2002‒Dec 2004). These have recently been processed to a

Figure 1. July 2004 monthly mean precipitation from the MAC (bottom row, right) and the eight individual models compared to GPCP
precipitation.

August 2008

the assimilated observations provide a strong point of correlation among analyses, the ensemble of analyses may be
a better data product for evaluation and validation thanany one of the contributing members (e.g., the Global
Soil Wetness Project (GSWP), Dirmeyer et al., 2006).

Coordinated Energy and water cycle Observations Project.
In addition, the development of the MAC may help define
the contributions to be requested from numerical weather
prediction and modelling research centers.

The initial comparisons of MAC ensemble data with observation data have been promising. Figure 1 shows themonthly mean maps of the MAC ensemble average andeach contributing member difference from the Global
Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) merged precipitation for July 2004. The figure brings out some deficiency in each analysis, such as too much continental
precipitation in the Experimental Climate Prediction
Center’s (ECPC) Reanalysis II system, but not enough intheir seasonal forecast model system. Since all the analyses
have high precipitation over the tropical Pacific Ocean,the ensemble average has a high bias. This result points
to a limitation in the MAC ensemble, that correlated biases will continue to manifest in the resulting average. To
quantify the error with respect to GPCP, we also computed the standard deviation of the global difference maps
(Figure 2). This figure shows that the monthly mean precipitation of the ensemble has lower error than any of thecontributing members across the time period.

Bosilovich, M. G., and R. Lawford, 2002. Report on the CoordinatedEnhanced Observing Period (CEOP) International Workshop, Bull.
Amer. Met. Soc., 83, 1495–1499.

Bosilovich et al. (2008) provides an expanded evaluationof the MAC ensemble, including Taylor diagrams, regional
daily precipitation, and radiation observations (from theSurface Radiation Budget), and the early results are equallyencouraging. The MAC data has been made open to the
CEOP community for both evaluation of the method to
produce it, and for use in CEOP science activities. Feedback on the data is welcome, as a second version of thedata is planned for early 2009, where anticipated CEOP
contributions from ECMWF and NASA/GSFC GMAO
will be incorporated. These results will contribute to defining the need to continue a similar modelling effort into theReferences:

Bosilovich, M. G., D. M. Mocko, and J. O. Roads, 2008. A Multi-model Analysis for the Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period (CEOP), In
Preparation for J. Hydromet.
Dirmeyer, P. A. and co-authors, 2006. Multi-model Analysis and Implications for our perception of the land surface, Bull. Amer. Met. Soc., 87,
1381–1395.

DATA AVAILABLE FROM THE INTERCONTINENTAL TRANSFERABILITY STUDY
Burkhardt Rockel and Beate Geyer
GKSS Research Centre, Geesthacht, Germany

Within the Inter-Continental Transferability Study (ICTS,
Rockel et al., 2005, http://icts.gkss.de) several institutes (seeTable 1) take part in the investigation on the performanceof regional climate models (RCMs) for seven regions
around the globe (see Figure 1) with the main intentions
described by Takle et al. (2007). These regions were chosen to cover the areas of the Regional Hydroclimate Projects (RHP) in CEOP. Participating institutes performed
simulations with their RCM for a 5-year period (2000–
2004) with the same standard model configuration for
all regions. This standard configuration is taken from one
usually applied to the “home” region of the model (i.e.,
where the model is normally used). This non-adaptation
has consequences for the model performance and shows
the weaknesses of the models in those regions that lay in
a different climate zone than the “home” domain. Thishas been shown based on the example of precipitation by
Meinke et al. (2007) and Rockel and Geyer (2008) for the
Regional Spectral Model (RSM) and the Climate versionof the Local Model (CLM3), respectively.
Each institute provided daily values for several quantities
from their model runs on a common latitude-longitude
Acronym
CLM3
CRCM
GEM-LAM
RCA3

Figure 2. Standard deviation time series of the global difference plotted against monthly GPCP data. CMAP monthly precipitation is also
shown for reference.

August 2008

RSM

Description
Climate version of the Local
Model
Canadian Regional Climate
Model
Global Environmental Multiscale Limited Area Model
Rossby Centre Atmosphericclimate model version 3
Regional Spectral Model

Institution
GKSS Research Centre,
Germany
OURANOS, Canada
RPN/MSC and University ofQuebec, Canada
Rossby Centre, SMHI,
SwedenExperimental Climate prediction Center, U.S.

Table 1. Institutions providing results for the data archiveEXPERIMENTAL DROUGHT MONITORING
FOR AFRICA
Justin Sheffield1, Eric F. Wood1, Dennis P. Lettenmaier2and Annukka Lipponen3
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA; 2University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; 3UNESCO, International Hydrological
Programme, Paris, France
1

Figure 1. Common domains (rectangles) and CEOP reference sites(red dots)

grid with a grid mesh of 0.5 degrees. Additionally, 3-hourly values were provided as Model Output Location Time
Series (MOLTS) for grid boxes covering 39 reference site
locations (plus eight adjacent grid boxes). Thus all reference sites are taken into account except the two stationsin Siberia that do not fall into any of the seven model
domains.
The data was converted at the Gesellschaft für Kernenergieverwertung in Schiffbau und Schiffahrt (GKSS)
Research Centre into a common format (netCDF, CFconventions) and transferred to the official CEOP dataarchive at the World Data Centre for Climate (WDCC)
in Hamburg, Germany (Touissant et al., 2006). The
data is freely available to the scientific community.
Again, the present data are from simulations where no
adaptation of the RCMs to each region was made; thishas to be taken into account in the interpretation of theresults.
For detailed information on ICTS visit http://icts.gkss.
de. Data can be downloaded via http://cera-www.dkrz.de/
WDCC/ui/BrowseExperiments.jsp?key=ICTS. The supplied
metadata include detailed information on the contact person of each data set.
References:
Rockel, B., I. Meinke, J. Roads, W. J. Gutowski Jr., R. W. Arritt, E. S.
Takle, and C. Jones, 2005. The Inter-CSE Transferability Sudy, CEOP
Newsletter, 8, 4–5.
Rockel B., and B. Geyer, 2008. The Performance of the Regional Climate Model CLM in Different Regions, Based on the Example of Precipitation, Meteorol. Z., 17, 2008 (in print).
Meinke, I., J. Roads, and M. Kanamitsu, 2007. Evaluation of RSMsimulated Precipitation During CEOP, J. Meteor. Soc. Japan, 85A, 145–
166.
Takle, E. S., J. Roads, B. Rockel, W. J. Gutowski Jr., R. W. Arritt, I.
Meinke, C. G. Jones, and A. Zadra, 2007. Transferability Intercomparison: An Opportunity for New Insight on the Global Water Cycle andEnergy Budget, Bull. Amer. Soc., 88, 375–384.
Toussaint, F., M. Lautenschlager, and H. Luthardt, 2006. The WDCClimate as CEOP Model Data Center, CEOP Newsletter, 9, 3–4.

Drought is among the most damaging of natural disasters inhuman, environmental, and economic terms. Its consequences are perhaps nowhere more urgent than in Africa, where
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
projections of increased future drought frequency show perilous implications for the livelihood of residents who depend
heavily upon ecosystem services. International efforts to alleviate the effects of drought, such as the U.S. multi-agency
Famine Early Warning System (FEWS), have struggled withan incomplete observational basis for monitoring and forecasting drought over Africa. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) has identified water resources management as a
critical area in which improved information and prediction
capabilities are needed, including drought.
Through its International Hydrological Programme (IHP),
the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) supports an international scientific cooperative program in water research and education.
During the GEWEX CEOP 2006 meeting, UNESCO
IHP personnel discussed with the authors the possibilityof developing a demonstration drought monitoring andprediction system for Africa, which would respond to theneeds of UNESCO members, contribute to IHP activities and capacity building, and respond to GEO drought
needs. The activity we report here is also a contribution of
the GEWEX Hydrologic Applications Project (HAP).
The result of those discussions is the African Drought Monitor (ADM), developed jointly by Princeton University andthe University of Washington, which is now accessible at
http://hydrology.princeton.edu/monitor. The ADM constitutes
a first element in addressing a GEWEX HAP goal of forecasting drought evolution, recovery, and impacts over Africa.
The ADM has the objective of providing near-real time
(2–3 days latency) drought monitoring products based onlarge-scale hydrological model output, and making theseavailable for evaluation by UNESCO-IHP’s partners in
Africa and other African-based groups identified in consultation with UNESCO.
Specifically, the ADM:
1. Provides near-real time fields of soil moisture and otherhydrologic variables over Africa using observation-forced
simulations of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle.
2. Provides drought-oriented products that quantify thecurrent state of drought in the context of the region’s
climatology.

August 2008

3. Monitors where drought thresholds are crossed for soil
moisture, and continues to track drought evolution intime until the nowcasts indicate that the drought has dissipated.
Sheffield et al. (2004) developed a drought index for thecontinental U.S. based on a 50-year retrospective simulation of the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) land
surface model. Drought severity was assessed based on
VIC soil moisture quantiles, which effectively normalize drought characteristics over different Climatologicalregimes. A variation of this approach incorporated into
Princeton University’s Drought Monitoring and Hydrologic Forecasting System (Luo and Wood, 2007) and the
University of Washington’s U.S. Surface Water Monitor(Wood and Lettenmaier, 2006) is used as one element of
the U.S. Drought Monitor, which merges quantitativeand qualitative assessments of drought.
For Africa, a similar procedure was utilized to develop
the ADM. The background climatology for drought assessment is based on long-term (1950–2000) VIC land
surface model simulations of terrestrial hydrology forcedby the meteorological forcing dataset of Sheffield et al.
(2006). The final bias-corrected and downscaled forcings
are applied at 1.0 degree latitude-longitude spatial resolution. Such observation-forced simulations offer a way

Figure 2. Snapshot of the web interface to the drought monitor showing maps of current conditions (soil moisture percentiles relative to a
50-yr climatology) and other hydrologic fields such as daily precipitation, surface runoff and evapotranspiration.

of analyzing historical soil moisture over large time andspace scales in the absence of direct observations. The realtime drought indices used in the ADM are based on thecalculated soil moisture and runoff fields relative to theirseasonal climatologies. Figure 1 shows the historic timeseries of the ADM Drought Index and Africa in drought
regions. Also shown are maps of monthly drought severity
during these drought events.
Real-time drought monitoring is challenging because of
the necessity to rely on data streams from various providers and locations, and we thus use observations fromseveral sources. Precipitation is the most critical factor inforcing, and is taken from the Precipitation Estimationfrom Remotely Sensed Information using the Artificial
Neural Networks (PERSIANN) system. Surface air temperature and wind speed are gridded from Global Telecommunication System stations. Downward radiative
fluxes and humidity are indexed to surface air temperature and its diurnal range. Backup meteorological data
are taken from the National Centers for Environmental
Protection (NCEP) Global Forecast System analysis fields
when primary data are unavailable or fail quality control
checks. Figure 2 shows current drought and hydrologic
conditions at the time of writing from the ADM web
page.
Figure 1. (left) visuals show spatial distribution of drought severity(as percentiles of total column soil moisture relative to 1950–2000 climatology) for major 20th century drought events; (right) ADM drought
index time series and area in drought for three regions of Africa

August 2008

Inconsistencies between our 50-year model climatology and the near real-time data pose a major challenge.
For instance, the PERSIANN satellite-based precipita-tion is generally higher than climatology, which tends
to bias the drought products. We are currently adding additional satellite-based real-time precipitation
streams (namely, the NCEP Climate Prediction Center
CMORPH product and NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) TMPA-RT product) that will
give an indication of the uncertainty in the real-time
products. We are also working to extend our climatology period (currently to 2000) to provide a longer overlap period, and allow us to implement bias adjustment
procedures.
The experimental African Drought Monitor offers thecommunity near-real time, quantitative drought andwater cycle monitoring based on physical quantities
such as soil moisture—the only such observation-based
system available for Africa to our knowledge. The ADM
builds on NASA-supported science and satellite data
products that are also central to GEWEX and HAP’s
goal of providing GEWEX data and science products towater resources managers and related users. For Africawith its sparse hydrometeorological network, we believethat our strategy of structuring the ADM around satellite and weather model products is the most realistic
pathway forward, and constitutes an important demonstration of the Global Earth Observation System of
Systems (GEOSS) concept. Development of the system
in collaboration with UNESCO IHP assures evaluation
and use of the ADM by stakeholders in Africa. Furthermore, the ADM constitutes a quantitative monitoring/
nowcast system, and as such is a crucial first step for
future development of a seasonal hydrologic forecasting
system.
References:
Luo, L., and E. F. Wood, 2007. Monitoring and Predicting the 2007 U.S.
drought. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L22702, doi:10.1029/2007GL031673.
Sheffield, J., G. Goteti, F. Wen, and E. F. Wood, 2004. A Simulated Soil
Moisture Based Drought Analysis for the USA. J. Geophys. Res., 109,
D24108, doi:10.1029/2004JD005182.
Sheffield, J., G. Goteti, and E. F. Wood, 2006. Development of a 50-yr,
High Resolution Global Dataset of Meteorological Forcings for Land
Surface Modeling. J. Clim., 13, 3088–3111.
Wood, A. W., and D. P. Lettenmaier, 2006. A Testbed for New Seasonal
Hydrologic Forecasting Approaches in the Western U.S. Bull. Amer. Met.
Soc., 87(12), 1699–1712, doi:10.1175/BAMS-87-12-1699.

CEOP KICK-OFF MEETING ON HIGH ELEVATIONS
16–17 April, 2008, Padua, Italy
Gianni Tartari1 and Emanuela Manfredi2
Water Research Institute, Milan, Italy; 2Ev-K2-CNR Committee,
Bergamo, Italy
1

The meeting was organized by the Everest-K2-Consi-

glio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Ev-K2-CNR) Committee and hosted by the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences
and Climate (ISAC-CNR), convened following the“High Elevations” (HE; http://www.ceop-he.org) working group meeting in early 2008. HE is a new elementof “regional focus” within CEOP, which aims to contribute to an understanding of the water and energy
cycles in high elevation regions and to study their role
within the climate system on a regional and global scale.
At the meeting, presentations by HE Steering Committee (SC) members focused on Tibet and the Himalayas,
Central Asia, Caucasus, the Trans-African Alpine Zone,
North America and the Western Andes Cordillera, andthe European Alps, as well as international monitoring networks [CEOP-Reference Sites, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)/Global Atmosphere
Watch (GAW), Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABC) in
Europe, and the North American Monsoon Experiment(NAME) site].
The SC members discussed the HE-Scientific Plan, defining the goals and addressing HE plans for improving
knowledge in climate sciences and the hydrological cycle
in high altitude areas. Discussions centered around the
topics: (a) definition of “high elevations”; (b) identificationof significant high elevations sites for the study of physical and dynamic processes to understand the regional andglobal climate system, and establishment of characteristics
of a representative HE station; (c) new components to betaken into account within the local and global climate
and circulation system: cryospheric research, free troposphere and aerosols, monsoons, radiative forcing, links to
the hydrological cycle, climate variability; (d) methods:
down-scaling and back trajectory analysis (large and regional transport), development of numerical models withcomplex topography, drilling of shallow and deep ice corein the field; and (e) observation data analysis: transportation of water vapor, aerosol, atmospheric compounds
and mineral dust, comparisons of long-term trends in thetemperature, humidity and precipitation at different highelevations with different climatic zones, and developmentof an HE database to collect data from existing observations.
The meeting made it possible to identify activities for theHE group, including: investigating significant processes
concerning the water and energy budget at high elevations
and defining an interdisciplinary approach for carrying
out high elevations research; studying synergies between
meteorological-climate and hydrological studies in orderto improve the management of water resources; understanding how the climate and hydrological cycle associated with high elevations affects global climate change,
including climate variability; and, creating an electronicarchive of high altitude monitoring stations. The Draft
CEOP-HE Scientific Plan will be presented at the 2nd
CEOP Annual Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, 15–17
September 2008.

August 2008

CEOP EXTREMES WORKSHOP
21–23 May, 2008, Vancouver B.C., Canada
Ronald Stewart1, Richard Lawford1 and Barrie Bonsal2
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; 2University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
1

The GEWEX/CEOP Extremes Workshop was attended
by 26 experts from 8 countries. Its main objective was to“advance the CEOP Extremes effort.” The meeting was
supported by the Drought Research Initiative, Environment Canada’s Pacific Weather Centre, and WCRP.
The presentation part of the workshop provided global
and regional overviews on research and data aspects ofhydrometeorological extremes. These were followed bydiscussions intended to clarify focal points, assess current
status, and make suggestions for moving forward.
It was evident that numerous scientific issues need to be addressed in connection with extremes, including: the lack ofa fundamental understanding of the means through which
all extremes develop and evolve; the character of droughtthat enables it to last for years while being continuously
dry or interspersed with heavy precipitation; the lack ofunderstanding of the means through which extremes may
be inter-related; and the role played by extremes in the
climate system needs to be better understood.
It was recognized that four general goals exist for extremes
work and that it is appropriate for GEWEX to lead in addressing them. The goals include: (1) data sets, case studies
and process studies; (2) a statistical and physically-based
analysis of extreme events based primarily on data; (3) aunified model for predicting extremes; and (4) an accurate
assessment of the effects of climate change on extremes
and their impacts.
A number of actions were recommended to move forward.
These include developing inventories of events, carryingout studies of similar phenomena in different regions, ex-ploiting satellite and radar products, carrying out comparative studies using model and observational products,
and producing a review article on extremes. The extremes
effort should furthermore contribute to and benefit fromthe Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and Global Water System Project (GWSP) activities.
This workshop was an important step in the CEOP and
WCRP extremes efforts. The next step will involve setting
priorities for moving forward in a logical, stepwise manner. The presentations and a detailed workshop summary
are available on the extremes web site (http://www.drinetwork.ca/extremes) and the CEOP home page.

NEW GLASS CHAIR
Dr. Bart van den Hurk of theRoyal Netherlands Meteorological
Institute (KNMI) assumed chairmanship of the GEWEX Global
Land/Atmosphere System Study(GLASS) in June 2008. He had
been co-chairing GLASS with Dr.
Andrew Pitman of the Climate
Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, whorecently stepped down. Dr. Martin Best (U.K. Met Office) will now act as co-chair of GLASS. Dr. van den Hurk
has been a member of GLASS since 2004 and has been
involved in LoCo, the Local coupled land-atmosphericmodelling project under GLASS. Dr. Pitman will remaina member of GLASS; he is acknowledged for his many
activities as its chair in the recent years.

GEWEX NEWS
Published by the International GEWEX Project Office

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS
20-24 July 2009, the 3rd International AMMA Conference,
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Contact: Ouaga2009@amma-int.org
24-28 August 2009, The 6th International Scientific
Conference on the Global Energy and Water Cycle
and the 2nd Integrated Land Ecosystem-Atmosphere
Processes Study Science Conference with Joint Sessions, Melbourne, Australia
Water in a Changing Climate: Progress in Land-Atmosphere Interactions and Energy/Water Cycle Research.
See http://www.gewex.org and http://www.ileaps.org

August 2008

Peter J. van Oevelen, Director
Dawn P. Erlich, Editor
Cathryn E. Kulat, Assistant Editor
International GEWEX Project Office8403 Colesville Rd, Suite 1550
Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA
E-mail: gewex@gewex.org
Web Site: http://www.gewex.org
This issue is published with support of EDITORIA(University of Tokyo), JAXA, and JST
CEOP home page: http://www.ceop.net
CEOP International Coordination Function:
Sam Benedict (sam.benedict@gewex.org)
Petra Koudelova (petra@hydra.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp)

STATUS OF THE JAXA DISTRIBUTED DATA INTEGRATION SYSTEM
Satoko Miura
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/
Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan (RESTEC), Tsukuba, Japan

The purpose of the “JAXA Distributed Data Integration System” is to provide user-friendly access to satellite, in-situ,
and model output data. The system has been operational since June 2005, and was upgraded in March 2008. Now there
are two entry points on the JAXA Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS) Test Facility for CEOP
(WTF-CEOP) web site (http://jaxa.ceos.org/wtf_ceop): one for the “Flood monitoring service for Hue, Vietnam” and theother for the “Distributed Data Integration Prototype System” (new version as of March 2008).
“The Flood monitoring service for Hue, Vietnam” is a new prototype system, which focuses on a serious flood that occurred in 2004. Users can acquire various information such as the area covered by water, precipitation amount, streamflow
information, and population density during the flood period in order to understand the damage and also estimate the risk
of future floods.
The “Distributed Data Integration Prototype System” handles satellite data, in-situ data, global gridded model output,
and Model Output Location Time Series (MOLTS) data. Its basic functions are not changed, but the data search interface
has been greatly improved compared to the previous version. Tutorial videos and user’s manuals for this revised prototype have been prepared and can be downloaded from the web site.

Figure 1. Flood monitoring service at Hue, Vietnam

Figure 2. Distributed Data Integration Prototype System (Revised version)

CEOP SATELLITE DATA GATEWAY OPENS
Toshio Koike
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

It is essential to integrate data from satellites observing both land and ocean in generating new CEOP data sets for theoverall water cycle. Within the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), the Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS) aims to coordinate and monitor the development of the systems and services, thatmanage and supply the data and information from participating organizations’ missions. Under this coordination framework, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),
the European Space Agency (ESA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are providing
their satellite data sets to CEOP. The University of Tokyo is archiving all of the CEOP satellite data in cooperation with
JAXA, a coordinator of the CEOP satellite data archive in CEOS/WGISS.
In addition to the CEOP Centralized and Distributed Data Integration System, a new CEOP Satellite
Data Gateway provides easy access to the satellite
data. Three scaletypes—global, monsoonal, andreference site—of satellite data sets are available. A
dataset consists of a raster (GRID) data file in theband sequential format (BSQ) and a metadata filein XML. At this moment, more than one million
scenes, including AMSR, AMSR-E, SSM/I, TMI,
PR, and GLI are available. MODIS, AIRS, ASAR,MERIS, PALSAR, PRISM, and AVNIR2 are going
to be open. Please visit http://monsoon.t.u-tokyo.
ac.jp/ceop2/satellite/ and get the data.

Figure 1. CEOP Satellite Data Gateway home page

August 2008