Jin Huang, CPO Earth System Science and Modeling Division Chief, attended and presented at the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) Scientific Steering Group meeting to share CPO’s research efforts relevant to the U.S. GEWEX Program Office and thoughts on future U.S. GEWEX activities. The U.S. GEWEX Program Office was established in fall 2019 to support U.S. interagency efforts focused on Federal water and energy cycle research that align scientifically with the World Climate Research Program’s (WCRP) GEWEX core project, and works closely with the USGCRP’s Integrated Water Cycle Group, co-chaired by CPO Director Wayne Higgins.
The GEWEX Scientific Steering Group meeting focused on updating GEWEX’s strategy documents and focus areas to align with the WCRP’s priorities. Some of the relevant past, current, and future CPO research efforts Huang shared to inform GEWEX activities included:
- new COM Program-funded projects to develop datasets from existing observations that aim to improve the representation of processes in the lower part of our atmosphere (i.e., boundary layer) in climate models;
- MAPP-funded land Climate Process Teams which will aim to more accurately represent land processes and their interactions as part of the climate system in models;
- joint NOAA-NASA FIREX field experiment, supported by the AC4 Program, to address expected more frequent and larger magnitude fires in the Western U.S. and Canada;
- CVP Program-funded ATOMIC field campaign to better understand cloud and air-sea interaction processes in the Northwest Tropical Atlantic region near Barbados, reduce model errors and improve predictions; and
- research on attributions, supported by multiple CPO programs, to develop observations, modeling, understanding, and analytical science to explain and prepare for climate extremes.
Huang also presented NOAA’s precipitation grand challenges at the GEWEX/SSG and encouraged the GEWEX and WCRP research community to address the systematic errors in the global coupled climate models.
The meeting took place at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Huang also presented these CPO research efforts that support U.S. GEWEX activities at both the AGU and AMS U.S. GEWEX town halls. Other agencies, including NASA, DOE, and NSF also presented on current activities and future interests to inform GEWEX discussions.
