Climate Prediction Program for the Americas(CPPA)

Outline:

- CPPA background- major past and ongoing activities and achievements- opportunities/advances in science & technology communities- CPPA direction and objectives in 10 years- short-term priorities (FY07-09)- milestones and progress measurement- engage stakeholders and how to quantify the impacts on stakeholders?- international and educational components- issues

- The presentation is preliminary- we’ll interact with external community and NOAA operations to refine future plans

- 2nd OGP-NWS Dialogue meeting (NCPO-NWS Dialogue)- US CLIVAR- GEWEX SSG and GAPP Science Advisory Group- CPPA Science Guidance/Working Group

Climate Prediction Program for the Americas

CPPA Science Objectives

- Improve the understanding and model simulation of ocean, atmosphere and land-surface processes

- Determine the predictability of climate variations on intra-seasonal to interannual time scale

- Advance NOAA’s operational climate forecasts, monitoring, and analysis systems

- Develop climate-based hydrologic forecasting capabilities and decision support tools for water resource applications.

PACS CPPA

CPPA Past/Ongoing Activities

- Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions- Address systematic ocean-atmosphere model biases

- Eastern Pacific Investigation of Climate (EPIC)

- Land-Atmosphere Interactions- Understand and model land-atmosphere interactions

- Land surface model- Land data assimilation system

- Develop and evaluate high resolution regional climate models and analyses

- Regional Reanalysis and regional climate modeling

- Coupled Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Interactions- Evaluate and improve the observing and coupled o-l-a modeling of the climate system

- North American monsoon experiment (NAME)- Western mountain hydroclimate- Drought and climate extremes predictability

- Water Resource Applications- interpret climate forecasts for better water resource management

- hydrologic predictability- improve hydrologic forecasting- develop water resource decision support tools

Expected short-term CPPA Achievements

• reduced ocean-atmosphere model biases

• improved land surface model as part of global climate models

• operational global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) which provides initial land states for GCM

• improved seasonal predictions via regional climate models

• improved warm season precipitation prediction

• better drought monitoring and prediction products

• improved applications of climate forecasts for various decision support

Opportunities in next 10 years(from advances in the entire science and technology communities)

• new and improved observations and data• for process studies; better initial conditions; model validation

• increased computing power• higher resolution models; larger ensemble runs;

• increased complexity of models• process-resolved models, e.g., cloud-resolving models, dynamic vegetation

• modern data assimilation

CPPA Long-term Directionto address remaining uncertainties

• focus on regional impacts of global & large scale variability

• study and simulate fine-scale, more complex physical processes • predictability of the coupled climate/Earth system• clouds and land-atmosphere coupling; • meso-scale air-sea interaction

• field experiments in support of model improvements (CPT approach)

• continue to transfer research into NOAA operations

• expand applications beyond water resource management• fire• agriculture

CPPA FY07-09 Priorities • Drought predictability and prediction

• Large scale forcing; regional and small scale feedbacks;

• American Monsoon monitoring and prediction

• Land surface processes and modeling

• Tropical Pacific SST prediction• double ITCZ; eastern ocean boundary SST;

• Field experiments (using CPT approach)• Western Mountain Hydroclimate Studies (winter season)• VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Studies (VOCALS)

• Improve applications of climate forecast for water resource management

CPPA FY07-09 Activities in Drought Predictability and Prediction

• Determine the role of SSTs in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean basins in forcing major North American droughts of the 20th Century.

• Quantify the strength of land-atmosphere feedbacks to the evolution of drought and assess their treatment among current AGCMs.

• Develop new operational Drought Monitor products which optimally synthesize in situ, satellite, and model-generated analyses to support hydrologic and agricultural applications.

• Conduct drought Climate Testbed project and issue recommendations for improvements in NOAA’s Climate Forecast System (joint with NCEP).

• Test and evaluate newly developed empirical and dynamical Drought Prediction products.

Western Mountain Hydroclimatology

Modeled snowpack andrunoff improved with

topographic Influences (Leung et al.)

Monsoon mountainrainfall very sensitiveto model parameterizations(Gochis et al.)

Challenge and future studies:

• Observations and data analyses– orographic precipitation including assimilating remote sensing data– hydroclimatic processes in western mountains in cold seasons

• Prediction– downscaling precipitation forecasts from large scale to sub-basin– seasonal predictability in mountain regions (local and remote forcing)– representation of subgrid variability of hydrologic variables (precipitation, snow, togography, vegetation) in climate models

- A planning meeting will be held in 2006 to developimplementation strategies- will leverage community and interagency effort

VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Studies (VOCALS)

• VOCALS is an international program for studies of the eastern tropical Pacific climate

• VOCALS is a post EPIC study

• Science goals emphasize: • Interactions between the climate in the southeastern Pacific and remote climates, particularly over South America and its monsoon system, • Biases in coupled GCMs and effects on seasonal and interannual predictability,• Local air-sea interactions, including stratocumulus clouds.

Main Users of CPPA Program • NWS operations

• NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS) and GFDL climate model• NWS/OHD & RFCs hydrologic prediction system

Information needs: improved understanding and modeling of climate processes and improved forecast skill

• Water resource managersInformation needs: downscaling of climate forecasts and regionalized forecasts

• Fire manager, agriculture, …Information needs:

How to measure program progress? • number of new/improved products

• new/improved model components and schemes

• reports on predictability studies

• demonstration of improved simulation/forecast skills

How to engage stakeholders?

• How does CPPA engage stakeholders and end users?• direct engagement:

• fund projects to directly work with stakeholders• CPPA Core Project to directly transfer research into NWS operations

• indirect engagement thru partnership with other programs, such as, SARP, NCTP• example: experimental hydrologic prediction system

• How to quantify the impacts of CPPA on stakeholders?• number of case studies and successful stories

CPPA International Components

• meetings for scientific planning, field coordination, and post-field data set development, analyses, and modeling

• travel of international PIs and their students to participate in the field and to enable joint research among investigators

• transfer of research into other countries– Expand LDAS and hydrologic Prediction system into Mexico– Test Eta model in S. America

• forecaster exchanges

• collaborative deployment and operation of observing systems

• cooperative development and provision of data sets

• observing system design and transition to operations

CPPA Educational Components

• training courses in observations, analysis and modeling

• graduate education opportunities at US institutions

Issues

- Does NOAA Climate Prediction & Project Program support international climate operations/services?

- NOAA needs a mechanism for operational organizations to take over long-term research data development so that research funds can be released to support new research.